Over at Muckraker we’ve done a few pieces today on just whether Duke Cunningham really ever cooperated with federal investigators or did much more than admitting to what they already knew. This leaves the distinct possibility that the only one of the principals in the case — Duke, the four co-conspirators — to have cooperated with investigators in any material way is Mitchell Wade, whom various published reports say began cooperating early and extensively.
I’m pretty certain from my reporting that they’ve gotten nothing from Wilkes or Tommy Kontogiannis, the other two co-conspirators.
So if the feds never got Duke to cough up his accomplices, what went wrong?
The other question is what to make of these statements from the west coast head of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, claiming that Cunningham isn’t cooperating and hinting that the scandal is far more extensive than people realize. We’ve had a hard time figuring out just what he means by that. But my hunch is that there’s some conflict between the DOD and DOJ investigators about how far to take this. More on this soon.
