WASHINGTON — House committees investigating the scandal-plagued General Services Administration released an e-mail and letter yesterday showing that the organizer of a lavish Las Vegas conference escaped disciplinary action and even got a $9,000 bonus.

“Expenses for a clown suit, bikes, tuxedos and mind reader don’t really lend themselves to a claim of a substantive conference,” Deputy Administrator Susan Brita wrote in an e-mail to underling Robert Peck in July.

Brita complained that Peck had failed to adequately discipline the regional administrator in charge of the Las Vegas conference, Jeff Neely, by sending him a letter that called the conference “a managerial lapse.”

“Jeff is a seasoned SES [senior executive service] who is expected to display the higher standards of common sense and prudent financial management,” Brita wrote Peck. “He did neither. Sorry, but your letter [to Neely] is not even a slap on the wrist.”

Peck was fired last week and Neely was placed on administrative leave in the aftermath of a report from the agency’s inspector general, who found that there was “no substantive agenda” at the conference.

The scandal has also cost former GSA Administrator Martha Johnson her job.

The internal government memo shows that the troubled agency was worried about the public and press fallout of the Vegas conference long before the embarrassing details seeped out this month.

If the story “were to hit the press, what would public reaction be?” Brita wrote. “What would congressional reaction be?”