Mitchell Wade and his MZM, Inc. have been grabbing headlines recently. Knight-Ridder detailed MZM’s work for the Pentagon’s domestic “counterintelligence” operation, CIFA, and the WPost recounted Wade’s rise to crooked prominence.
We had a story on the guy too, about a funny little contract his company held with the Department of Energy’s counterintelligence office. The work was performed by an MZM staffer named Douglas Evalenko; we knew little beyond that.
Since the story ran we’ve learned a little more. According to DoE spokeswoman Chris Kielich, Evalenko had developed a “classified data system” for the department’s CI office when he was employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In 2002 Evalenko left LANL to work for MZM. But DoE still needed him to work on its “classified data system,” so it contracted with MZM to use him — at $180 an hour.
Evalenko’s contract with Energy went from March 2002 to Sept. 2005, and cost $67,000, according to Kielich. She declined to give details on what his secret system did, saying only, “It’s classified.”
That’s the second counterintelligence data system we know MZM was helping run; the first is at CIFA. What were these databases meant for? Are there others?