The Curious Life of Kyle “Dusty” Foggo

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What do we know about Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the highest-ranking CIA official to admit he attended poker parties thrown by crooked contractor Brent Wilkes? Thanks to a handful of enterprising journos, we know a surprising amount about the guy, whom the CIA insisted was undercover until late last year. Those facts help draw a line through history that leads Foggo — and others — from the jungles of Central America to the posh hotel suites where Wilkes did his questionable entertaining.

(A quick shout out to the San Diego Union Tribune, Laura Rozen and Jason Vest, whose work forms the basis for this post.)

In November 2004, newly-installed CIA chief Porter Goss reached down into the ranks of long-serving middle managers at the CIA to make Foggo the Executive Director of the agency. Thus the lifelong friend of Cunningham briber Wilkes found himself in charge of running day-to-day operations for the $5 billion spy outfit.

Wilkes and Foggo have known each other since they played football together in high school 34 years ago. They were roommates in college, and best men at each others’ weddings. They named their sons after each other. When the two men became successful in Washington together, they jointly rented a wine locker at the posh Capitol Hill steak joint, the Capital Grille. And for the past 15 years they played poker together, along with lawmakers and other CIA officials. News accounts suggest they did more; both men so far have denied that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the early 1980s, after graduating from San Diego State University and working for three years as a police officer, Foggo joined the CIA. He was sent to Honduras to assist the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, sources told the San Diego Union-Tribune last year. Foggo’s position was essentially a contracting officer — he could get anyone anything they needed. (And in the CIA, that can really run the gamut.) Sources say he was pretty good at it.

Meanwhile, Wilkes set up shop in D.C., and somehow made a living ferrying congressmen to Central America, where he would introduce them to Foggo and the Contras.

With Foggo’s help, by the end of the 1980s Wilkes had cemented relationships with a number of congressmen — mostly members of three key House committees: Intelligence, Appropriations, and Armed Services, the Union-Tribune reports.

(Last week, the SDUT reported that lawmakers from those same committees joined Wilkes and Foggo at Wilkes’ hotel suites for “poker parties” throughout the 1990s and into this decade.)

During that time, sources tell POGO’s Jason Vest that Foggo racked up a number of potentially embarrassing “social encounters” that are now in his counterintelligence (CI) file:

According to sources familiar with Foggo’s counterintelligence file. . . much of [the file] has to do with various social encounters over the years, none of which he’s been deceptive about when polygraphed, and all of which have been deemed to be of no threat to operational security–but are still the types of things that could be embarrassing for Goss and the agency. . . .

Several senior CIA officials have expressed concerns about potential embarrassment over parties [Foggo and Wilkes] have thrown together in overseas locations.

So was Foggo a potentially embarrassing appointment for Goss to make? Yes. That may explain why, on the eve of Foggo’s appointment, Goss’ deputy Patrick Murray put the word out at the CIA that any leak from Foggo’s personnel file would be dealt with harshly.

It’s still not clear why Goss picked Foggo, or how he knew who he was. Laura Rozen says she’s been told that Foggo and Murray knew each other from Wilkes’ poker parties.

Foggo isn’t undercover anymore, although he may wish he was: Every reporter on this story I’ve spoken with seems to have a line on Foggo’s hijinks. And with his denial in the Wall Street Journal today, anyone with a bone to pick with the guy has a reason to pick up the phone and dish to a reporter. Trust me: the reporters are standing by.

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