Does the Cunningham Case Reach Into The CIA?

[kpete]

Contracting probe could extend to CIA
By Jason Vest
[e-mail]

Federal investigators in San Diego have made it clear that while just-resigned Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pled guilty last week to taking bribes from defense contractors, their public corruption probe will not stop at Cunningham. Numerous current and retired CIA officials say they will not be surprised if the investigation touches the CIA in general, and it's third-ranking official in particular.

Reporting for Government Executive magazine, Jason Vest — Digby’s nominee for Judy Miller’s job at the New York Times — suggests that the bribery and corruption investigation that nailed Republican representative Duke “I’m on the side of the angels here” Cunningham may reach into the CIA as well.

According to past and present CIA officials interviewed over the past month, CIA executive director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo–whose career duties have encompassed letting CIA contracts–has had a long, close personal relationship with two contractors identified (though not explicitly named) in court papers as bribing Cunningham: Brent Wilkes of the Wilkes Corp., whose subsidiaries include defense contractor ADCS; and former ADCS consultant Mitchell Wade, until recently president of defense contractor MZM, Inc. It is a relationship, the CIA officials say (with some putting a particular emphasis on Wilkes), that has increasingly been of concern.

One current and two retired senior CIA officials told Government Executive that the relationship of Wilkes and Foggo–who the CIA’s Web site declares is “under cover and cannot be named at this time,” even though he is pictured and identified on a federal charity web page–has been a subject of increasing concern by some at Langley.

Another recently-retired senior agency official, while not naming Wilkes or Wade by name, also noted concerns borne out of both personal experience with and reports from colleagues about Foggo. “If you were a case officer and worked with him, you’d be saying to yourself, ‘I’ve got to watch this guy,’” says the former official. “There is one contractor with whom he enjoys a very, very, very close relationship.”
http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1168
http://govexec.com/dailyfed/1205/120405v1.htm

[punpirate]

1. Shades of Brownie and...

... Joe Allbaugh:

An intelligence source tells the Prospect that Wilkes’ company received at least one CIA contract – to supply CIA employees in Iraq with water, early into the invasion. Sources say such a contract may have been facilitated not only by the hundreds of thousands of dollars Wilkes steered to Cunningham, but also by the fact that Wilkes’ university roommate and long time friend is a recently promoted top CIA manager, K. “Dusty” Foggo. A career CIA operations support officer, Foggo was somewhat controversially appointed by incoming CIA director Porter Goss -- Cunningham’s former colleague on the House intelligence committee -- last year to be the executive director of the Agency, in effect, the CIA’s #3 official and day to day administrative manager of the $5 billion agency. (See Jason Vest’s profile and this Walter Pincus piece for background). An intelligence source says that Wilkes even jokes about Foggo having a virtual office (“a playpen”) in Wilkes’ company’s offices in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Chantilly, Virginia. Wilkes’ attorney Michael Lipman wouldn’t comment on whether government investigators were reviewing any CIA contracts ADCS might have received, he also declined to say whether Wilkes was cooperating with the investigation. Wilkes has not yet been indicted.

A bit more from Laura Rozen on this here:

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/11/

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