Like ink on a paper towel, the stain spreads.
Arch-Cunningham-fraudster Brent Wilkes was 
tight with the #3 guy at the CIA, Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo.
Now the CIA Inspector General has opened an investigation into Foggo. Before DCI Porter Goss appointed Foggo #3 at the Agency, Foggo was a “a mid-level procurement supervisor.”
So, Foggo’s line of work was contracting, procurement, buying stuff for the Agency. Wilkes’ line of work was coming up with shoddy products and then corrupting members of Congress and procurement officials to buy his crap.
Hard to imagine why they might want to scrutinize his lifelong personal and professional ties to Brent Wilkes, right?
As a professional muckraker, I wouldn’t mind so 
much if this whole lobbying reform effort just passed on by without much more of a fuss. True reform would be bad for business.
But as a citizen, I must admit to some frustration.
Say it with me: There is a bipartisan reluctance to pass strong ethics reform. How does that sound to you? It’s true.
Yesterday, Democrats had another chance to help set themselves apart from Republicans on this issue and to really push it. Without getting mired in the specifics, here’s the thing: Sens. Collins (R-ME) and Lieberman (D-CT) put forward legislation that would establish an Office of Public Integrity, an external agency to investigate ethics complaints. Sen. Obama put forward something very similar last month and it didn’t make much of a splash.
It didn’t go over any better this time around. Three Senate Democrats on the committee helped vote it down 11-5.
Now, two of the three Dems – Sens. Akaka (D-HI) & Pryor (D-AR) – who voted against it sit or recently sat on the Senate ethics committee. Apparently they agree with Sen. Voinivich that “The ethics committee is already doing those things.” Fine. How many voters think that? Do you?
The Republicans haven’t had to stick their necks out on this one yet. Make them fight for their gifts and meals. And make them, again and again, get up in front of cameras and say that the ethics process is working.
If they don’t, then nothing meaningful will come of any of this. And the muckraker in me would rejoice.
In the market for a commode? a piece of history?
Duke’s antiques are set to be auctioned off in three weeks.
See the loot here – it’s under “Antiques.”
Proceeds to benefit the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation branch and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
Split decision: ex-Rep. Randy 
“Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) gets 8 years 4 months for accepting bribes and public corruption of various sorts.
Federal prosecutors had asked for the maximum sentence of ten years, citing Cunningham’s corruption which they argued was unprecedented in its scope and brazenness.
Defense attorneys asked for six years.
According to the AP, it is the longest sentence ever meted out to a member of Congress.
See federal prosecutors sentencing memorandum here.
See the highlights of the memorandum here.
See the crack piece of enterprise reporting by the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Marcus Stern, published on June 12th, 2005, which started Duke’s vast skein of unbridled corruption unraveling.
See the TPM archive of Randy “Duke” Cunningham reportage-cum-snark here.
Close down the Agency and just go with INR?
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy has a great post here about another case where US policymakers (Condi Rice) said a political outcome abroad — (Hamas’ election victory in the Palestinian Authority) couldn’t have been predicted when in fact their own intelligence experts did predict it.
“I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’ strong showing,” Condi said after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. But INR — the State Department’s in-house intel shop — more or less predicted the result.
Earlier today I mentioned the report that the CIA Inspector General has opened an investigation into Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. As we noted, the investigation stems from Foggo’s lifelong friendship and close professional association with Brent Wilkes, the biggest fraudster at the heart of the Duke Cunningham.
Here’s the key point to keep in mind here — here and in the rest of the investigations the Cunningham case is likely to spawn. These guys were smart (Wilkes and his protege Mitchell Wade). They ran these scams in the ‘black’ parts of the Pentagon budget and in intelligence procurement. The ‘black’ stuff is top secret. Not only is it hidden from the public and all forms of public disclosure; it’s not scrutinized very closely or even allowed to be seen by very many people on Capitol Hill.
There are reasons for having top secret programs in the defense and intel sphere. But it’s an invitation for corruption, because few of the checks on corruption are in place. Rivers of money can just disappear.
Doing his dirty work in the top secret parts of the budget was Brent Wilkes’ racket. He taught it to Mitch Wade. The fact that he was tight with the #3 guy at CIA who came out of the Agency’s procurement bureaucracy raises all sorts of red flags. As well it should.
Fred Kaplan: “Yes, We Should Worry About Iran.”
Concluding sentence: “We may end up having to live with a nuclear Iran, but it won’t be easy to manage; it shouldn’t be shrugged at.”
Paul Kiel mentioned earlier today that March 23rd is the day. That’s when the US government will auction off the ill-begotten gains of disgraced Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA). The auction is run by IRS-Criminal Investigation, actually subcontracted to a company called EG&G. But I digress.
The loot — mainly antiques and rugs and assorted other uncharacteristically dainty items Duke bagged during his congressional crime-spree — might fairly be titled the fruit of the Republican Revolution.
In any case, I think we’re going to send someone out to cover this.
The auction is on the 23rd in Rancho Dominguez, California, which actually appears to be in Compton, from what I can tell. But on the two days previous you can actually go inspect the merchandise at the EG&G Technical Services warehouse, located at 2332 E. Pacifica Place, Rancho Dominguez, CA. It’s open to the public and so presumably to one of our muckrakers too.
For instance, we’d like to get a closer look at this rug Duke got in exchange for getting the Pentagon to buy junk.
ORIENTAL RUG, WOOL, MARKED âBIDJARâ – IRAN BUT MAY BE âMAHEIâ DESIGN, DARK BLUE BORDER W/CONCENTRIC DIAMONDS IN CENTER; MULTI-COLORED (RED, BLUE, IVORY), 9â9″ X 12â10″, 1 EA
I’m not sure what a Bidjar is or a Mahei, though the later sounds like something I’d eat with rice and seawweed. In any case, I’d be interested to know.
This sounds fascinating too …
COMMODE/CHEST OF DRAWERS, W/BLACK MARBLE TOP, VENEERED, FOUR DRAWERS, KEY ESCUTCHEONS CENTERED ON DRAWERS, NO PULLS, BOTH SIDE PANELS SPLIT, 1 EA
I always thought a commode was a toilet. But apparently when you ascend further into the cultural stratosphere it’s actually a chest of drawers.
We’ll be bringing you more on this.
Jane Hamsher has an interesting post here about the rehabilitation of Michael Brown (aka “Brownie”). Suddenly, Brown, who was the butt of endless jokes and the target of titanic contempt and derision, is a reborn truth-teller and almost a kind of hero to critics of the administration. (Who says there are no second acts? Nowadays it’s just a matter of waiting a few months till you get your second act.) Jane links to this post in which Joe Gandelman offers Brown an apology for his earlier criticism; and Brown actually responds, accepting the apology and explaining his current position.
I don’t think there’s any use or reason to reconsider the conclusion that Brown was manifestly unqualified to be the head of the country’s emergency management agency or that he found himself in that job because of his longtime friendship with Joe Allbaugh, one of the president’s fixers. He was either guilty of or implicated in various other instances of ridiculousness. He was a poster-child for the administration’s essential lack of interest in effective government, as an aim of public service distinct from consolidating political power and paying off political supporters out of the public fisc. Also, for us critics, to the extent there is a Brownie redemption afoot, it is in large part because the same guy many of us lambasted six months ago is now flattering our assumptions about how this administration works.
Still, in this and so many other cases, our assumptions, always based on a lot of factual evidence, are being borne out in spades. And Brown is coming forward with a decent amount of evidence that even if he wasn’t the guy who should have had the job, and even if he made plenty of mistakes during Katrina, he wasn’t just bumbling along unaware anything serious was happening. If inept and blameworthy himself he seems clearly to have understood the magnitude of the catastrophe that was afoot and took steps to deal with it.
He also is coming forward with what appears to be a decent paper trail showing he had some sense and gave warnings about FEMA’s degradation and decline under the consolidated DHS. No one listen.
I can’t see glorifying Michael Brown. He shouldn’t have been in the job. He screwed up in a lot of different ways. He then carried the administration’s water in trying to pin the blame on the locals, what must be a mortal sin in a FEMA Director. But he does get some credit for coming clean now and spilling at least some of the beans. And the beans he’s spilled so far show that he’s hardly the most blameworthy figure in the administration’s shameful and pitiful response to the disaster that befell the Gulf Coast.