  The gauge dependence of the hot gluon self energy is examined in the context
of Pisarski's method for resumming hard thermal loops. Braaten and Pisarski
have used the Ward identities satisfied by the hard corrections to the n-point
functions to argue the gauge fixing independence of the leading order resummed
QCD plasma damping rate in covariant and strict Coulomb gauges. We extend their
analysis to include all linear gauges that preserve rotational invariance and
display explicitly the conditions required for gauge fixing independence. It is
shown that in covariant gauges the resummed damping constant is gauge fixing
independent only if an infrared regulator is explicitly maintained throughout
the calculation.
