More details on Mitchell Wade’s guilty plea.
First off, we can identify the two members of Congress: Reps. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and Katharine Harris (R-FL), who
are reportedly “Representative A” and “Representative B,” respectively, in Wade’s plea.
According to the USAO’s press release and the guilty plea, Wade made about $78,000 in “illegal campaign contributions” to these two – $32,000 to Harris and $46,000 to Goode. The contributions were illegal because Wade had his MZM employees and their spouses contribute under their own names, and then reimbursed them.
Wade says he did not tell either Harris or Goode that the contributions were illegal. But that doesn’t mean they come out of this looking good, either.
Wade asked that Goode request appropriations funding for an MZM facility in Goode’s district soon after he’d just delivered most of the $46K. This was at some unspecified time “in the spring” – the contributions were mostly made in March of 2005, so it can’t have been long. By June 2005, “Representative A [Goode] confirmed to Wade that the appropriations bill would include $9M for the facility and a related program.” Here’s a picture of Goode and Wade at the facility’s opening.
Harris comes out looking a little better. Wade approached her after delivering the $32K and the two dined at a “Washington D.C. restaurant.” According to the plea:
“At this dinner, Wade and [Harris] discussed, among other topics, the possibility of MZM’s hosting a fundraiser for [Harris] later in the year, and the possibility of obtaining funding and approval for a Navy counterintelligence program in [Harris’s] district and locating an MZM office in that district. Wade later prepared a proposal for the Navy counterintelligence program and submitted it to Harris’s staff.”
But, and here is where Harris gets off the hook a little: “The program was not funded.”
There’s also an an unidentifed Department of Defense official in the plea, whose son went to work for MZM (the job was paid for by the government in a reimbursement agreement with MZM) and who himself ultimately went to work for Wade. According to John Bresnahan of Roll Call, “Media reports have identified that official as William S. Rich Jr., former executive director for the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, and his son as William Scott Rich III.”
