The Real Mitchell Wade

In an effort to better understand the man who gave former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham over $1.4 million in bribes, I’ve spent a good amount of time finding and talking to former employees of Mitchell Wade at his company, MZM Inc. They don’t paint a flattering picture of the man.

Former employees rarely do, of course. But even accounting for the typical bad feelings harbored by disgruntled former employees, he is clearly not a nice man. None were willing to be named. Why?

“Vindictive,” “petty,” “calculating” and “paranoid” are words that come up again and again. “You were either on his team, or he wanted you destroyed,” said one person. “Everything Mitch did, he did for a reason,” said another. “And he’s still doing it.” He liked to open all the mail delivered to MZM, just to see what people were getting, one employee recalled.

Fears of surveillance — hidden cameras, bugs, eavesdroppers — weren’t uncommon among employees. (Given the company’s heavy involvement in counterintelligence, it may have been a healthy fear.)

At base, he was corrupt. There’s ample evidence already — millions of dollars in bribes, Defense officials’ relatives on the payroll, strange shell companies — that Wade had a penchant for doing things the dirty way. But employees say it was more: they both admired his ability to play people, and were disgusted by how stupid was his almost pathological need to be dishonest. “He could have done everything legally and been a billionaire,” said one former executive. “But he always wanted to cut corners.”

Another striking aspect of Wade’s management was how he compartmentalized his employees. Time and again I’ve been stunned by how little one executive knew about another’s professional activities. Mitch actively discouraged his staff from collaborating if he didn’t order it, one former executive told me. In retrospect, a number of them say that had they talked to each other more, they would have figured out what Wade was all about.