Time: Nine Fingers Was a Tour GuideMore on Nine Fingers.
Yesterday, we reported that Brent Wilkes had paid Brant “Nine Fingers” Bassett $5,000 while Bassett was a staffer with the House Intelligence Committee under Porter Goss.
Well, now we know what it was for. Bassett had been Wilkes’ tour guide:
The $5,000 Bassett accepted from Wilkes was for helping him with a business trip to a part of Europe where Bassett knew “the lay of the land from before” — presumably a reference to Bassett’s earlier work for the CIA, said the person speaking for Bassett. Bassett “was not an employee of [ADCS]. It was a one-off consulting deal” this person said on Bassett’s behalf. Wilkes’ Washington attorney, Nancy Luque, said Wilkes has done nothing wrong and that Bassett was hired as a consultant “for his knowledge of the area they were working in and facility with the languages spoken there.”
And there is another choice detail. Bassett didn’t just work under Goss at the House Intelligence Committee. When Goss rose to CIA director, he tapped Bassett for “a second stint at the agency as a consultant in the directorate of operations.” Brent Wilkes did indeed have some friends there.
One of them, his close acquaintance Kyle “Dusty” Foggo is finally communicating with the media, albeit through his lawyer:
Bill Hundley, an attorney for Foggo, who told colleagues this week that he will step down from the agency’s number three position as Goss leaves, says Foggo denies wrongdoing and is “really more of a victim here.” Hundley added that he has not had any inquiries from either the Justice Department or the CIA inspector general, who is investigating whether Wilkes’ business received any special treatment from Foggo.
“To him this guy was his friend and he obviously knew he was in the defense contracting business,” Hundley says of the relationship between Wilkes and Foggo. But Foggo “is just shocked, really, that he would — if he did — have given that amount of money to Cunningham.” Hundley added that Foggo may have attended widely reported poker parties that Wilkes threw in a hospitality suite in Washington, “but there was no hanky panky” at these events, he said.
