Duke Cunningham

Why Did Cheney's Office Supply the Cash to Bribe Duke Cunningham?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:57:54 -0400

Remember "Duke-Stir," the bribe to former Rep. Duke Cunningham that brought him down? Here are some remarkable facts, courtesy of ThinkProgress:

– Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty last February to paying then-California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham. The boat’s name was later changed to the “Duke-Stir.” Said one party to the sale: “I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that…Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it — all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away.”

– According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated earlier that summer, around the same time the White House contact was signed.

To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to a criminal contractor who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for an imprisoned congressman at a price that had been pre-negotiated.

Obviously MZM bribed Cunningham with the yacht. But it's very hard to figure out why Dick Cheney's office provided the cash for the bribe.

Perhaps that's exactly the question U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was asking - and why she was fired.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy promised to subpoena Karl Rove on Thursday. To get to the bottom of this scandal, Leahy may soon have to subpoena Dick Cheney.

Can the GOP Survive So Many Scandals?

Bob Fertik — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 12:01:38 -0400

Christy surveys the ever-expanding list of GOP scandals and shakes her head in disbelief. We have truly gone through the Looking Glass.

We Democrats look at these scandals and assume the normal results will follow. For the individual politician, that means humiliation, resignation, and exile to oblivion. Then his closest colleagues are exposed and follow the same trajectory: humiliation, resignation, and exile. Then the party hangs its head in shame, removes all bad apples, and returns to the path of God.

But the GOP doesn't play by the rules: there is no shame at the GOP.

There is no shame over Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Mark Foley, or any of the other Republicans who have resigned in disgrace.

There is no shame over the coverup by Speaker Denny Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner, the two most powerful Republicans in the House.

There is no shame - only attacks on Democrats like Bill Clinton (Hannity lies again!) and long-forgotten former Rep. Gerry Studds.

There is a simple reason why shame has no place in Republican politics: that's because the GOP is a top-down corporation, not (like the Democratic Party) a franchise operation of individual politicians who rise or fall based on their character and accomplishments.

Take George W. Bush. What had he ever achieved before he became the GOP nominee for President? Less than nothing. He went AWOL from the National Guard, failed at several businesses, and was drunk until 40. But Bush Inc. (led by James Baker and Karl Rove) decided he had a winning personality (unlike his dull father) that would make him electable, so they made him Governor (an easy task in solidly red Texas) and got him through the Republican presidential primaries in South Carolina by accusing John McCain of having an illegitimate black child.

Of course Bush didn't win in 2000 or 2004. But Baker and Rove made sure he was declared the victor by their Republican Secretaries of State (and Bush-Cheney campaign chairs), first Katherine Harris and then Ken Blackwell. In 2000, Baker even had to get his 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court to throw out 175,000 never-counted ballots.

That's how the GOP works: it's a corporation and everyone in the GOP is a loyal employee who does whatever (s)he is told.

Mark Foley is a loyal employee. When Karl Rove told him to resign, he did so immediately.

Denny Hastert is a loyal employee. When Karl Rove told him to block an investigation of Foley and his enablers, he did so immediately. When Karl Rove tells him to resign over the Foley scandal to protect the rest of the GOP leaders (Boehner, Reynolds, Shimkus, etc.), he will do so immediately.

Republicans don't care if their actions are immoral or even criminal. They know the Corporation will take care of them, both through the propaganda system (a.k.a. The Media) and through the legal system.

For the first 4 years of the Bush Regime, both of these systems worked perfectly. But in 2005, reality began to bite back. Jeff Gannon was exposed as a rightwing gay prostitute who was placed as a mole in the White House press corps. Iraq turned into a debacle, and the Downing Street Memos exposed the deliberate lies that brought it about. Retired generals exposed Rumsfeld's massive failures and demanded his replacement. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald got sick of White House lies and put the most powerful officials under oath repeatedly to get the truth, finally indicting Scooter Libby on perjury and exposing the whole character-assassination game.

And Bob Woodward finally woke up and smelled the rotten fish in the Oval Office.

So one by one, top Republicans are being exposed for their most blatant crimes. And one by one, Republican voters are waking up to the corruption at the heart of the GOP.

But will that be enough to cost Republicans control of Congress? Not as long as Republicans control the counting of votes in key states like Florida and Ohio and in thousands of counties where votes are counted by Republican machines programmed by Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia.

Republicans are in power for two reasons: they control the media and they count the votes. Progressives have broken the GOP monopoly on the media by creating our own - the blogs and Air America radio. But until we break the GOP monopoly on vote counting, Republicans will continue to control our government.

I'll offer solutions to this problem in the days and weeks to come...

Who's Threatening Dukestir in His Jail Cell?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 10 May 2006 14:31:29 -0400

It looks like the long arm of the Bush Organized Crime Family reaches into Federal prison. As Josh Marshall writes:

"Apparently, even in the slammer, Duke isn't cooperating. He's not willing to give up the really big fish, it seems.

Says Rick Gwin, regional head of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, "In my opinion, he has not been cooperative and I have not gotten any information from him to further develop other targets. I was hoping that from a jail cell, he might become more cooperative, but we just don't have the cooperation that I think we should have."

And then Gwin says this: "This is much bigger and wider than just Randy 'Duke' Cunningham. All that has just not come out yet, but it won't be much longer and then you will know just how widespread this is."

Uh oh.

Marshall adds this thought about Cunningham:

What would it take to get him to clam up? Duke is 64 years old. He's had cancer. He was just sentenced to 8+ years in prison. That might well be a death sentence. Who's he protecting? And what would make him think he's better off keeping quiet than telling investigators what they want to know?

One can only guess.

When you join Bush's GOP, you take the Pledge of Omerta - and you keep it.

Goss Quits As Hookergate Explodes

Bob Fertik — Fri, 05 May 2006 17:39:36 -0400

CIA Director Porter Goss quit so suddenly today that it even shocked FOX and Bill Kristol.

If you haven't been following Hookergate, now's the time to catch up. Here's the nutshell from ThinkProgress:

For more than a decade, Cunningham-linked defense contractor Brent Wilkes curried favor with lawmakers and CIA officials by hosting weekly parties at lavish hospitality suites at the Watergate and Westin hotels in Washington. Guests would gamble, socialize, and sometimes receive prostitutes; according to Harper’s magazine, the festivities “began early with poker games and degenerated” into what one source described “as a ‘frat party’ scene — real bacchanals.”

The highest-ranking CIA official to admit he attended the poker parties thrown by Wilkes is Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the agency’s third-ranking official. (Foggo even “occasionally hosted the poker parties at his house in northern Virginia,” though he denies ever seeing prostitutes at the gatherings.) Foggo’s connections to Wilkes and fellow contractor Mitchell Wade are now the focus of an investigation into CIA contracts by the agency’s inspector general, first made public in March...

Last week, Harper’s magazine reported that party-goers “under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.” CIA Director Porter Goss is perhaps the only individual who fits such a description. (Goss denied the accusations through a spokesperson.) But the alleged links between Goss, Foggo, and Wilkes led some to return to questions raised when Goss initially selected Foggo to be executive director in November 2004.

TPMMucker.com is blogging all the details.

So why exactly did Goss quit?

Justin Rood says "Goss was told to fire Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, his troublesome Executive Director, and Goss refused." That seems plausible, but it's just the tip of the iceberg if any of the Hookergate rumors are true.

Josh Marshall describes the broader picture:

The hookers in Hookergate are, of course, the sizzle. But there's a bigger story. It stems directly from the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal, which many had figured was over. But it's not. You may have noticed that while Duke Cunningham is already in jail and Mitchell Wade has already pled guilty to multiple charges, Brent Wilkes has never been touched. Wilkes is the ur-briber at the heart of the Cunningham scandal, you can see pretty clearly by reading the other indictments and plea agreements. Wade was Wilkes' protege.

Now, on the surface one might surmise that the prosecutors are just taking their time, putting together their best case.

I hear different.

Wilkes has deep ties into the CIA. The focal point of those ties is to Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the man Porter Goss appointed to the #3 position at CIA when he took over the Agency last year. Remember, Wilkes' scam was getting corrupt contracts deep in the 'black' world of intelligence and defense appropriations, where there's little or no oversight. Foggo was in the contracting and procurement field at the CIA. So you can see how he and Wilkes, who have been friends since high school, had plenty to talk about.

The CIA wasn't the only place Wilkes and his protege Wade plied their corrupt trade. There were also in the mix contracting on the Bush Pentagon's extra-constitutional spying operations. And I am told that senior appointees at the DOD knew about their corruption but overlooked it.

Now, since the Cunningham scandal got under, and particularly of late, there's been a big tug of war between federal law enforcement and the CIA over whether to really go after Wilkes. Probably a little more specificity is in order there, folks at CIA in the orbit of Foggo and presumably Goss.

Now, how does Goss know Foggo?

That's how we get into the other part of this story -- those 'hospitality suites', that moveable feast of food, poker and love, Brent Wilkes ran in Washington for maybe fifteen years. We hear that's how Goss got to be friends with Foggo, whom he later promoted to executive director of the CIA, the number 3 post at the Agency.

Now, last week, Goss denied he had attended any of Wilkes' parties, in answer to a question from TPMmuckraker. Foggo admitted attending the parties but claimed he'd never seen the hookers.

Now, corrupt contractors saucing up Agency officials and members of Congress to get contracts and free money. Hospitality suites where the saucing takes place. Hookers in the mix. It's going on for more than a decade, various members of the key committees in the mix. Goss, former member of one of those committees, appoints one of the key players in all this mess as the number three guy at CIA? The feds leaning hard on the limo company owner who probably knows all the details and already has a long rap sheet and can't afford another conviction?

There's a lot going on here, a lot we don't know, what's connected and what's coincidence. But this is the backstory. And why this story is likely to turn out to be a very big deal.

Republican Sex Scandal!

Bob Fertik — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:30:19 -0400

Since Bush and the Republicans stole the White House we've had every possible kind of scandal except heterosexual* sex - until now. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn't clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.

In recent weeks, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have fanned out across Washington, interviewing women from escort services, potential witnesses and others who may have been involved in the arrangement. In an interview, the assistant general manager of the Watergate Hotel confirmed that federal investigators had requested, and been given, records relating to the investigation and rooms in the hotel.

But that's just the tease, as it were. Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker writes:

at least two other publications have been delving into the matter for months. What's more, they've got details that are a good deal more salacious than what the WSJ reported. I'd look for them to rush what they've got into print as soon as it gets past the lawyers.

We may soon have more details of our own, so stay tuned. . .

Hey CNN/MSNBC/FOX - are you going to give as much time to the breaking Republican Sex Scandal as you gave to Cynthia McKinney, Gary Condit, and Bill Clinton?

* I specified heterosexual sex because of the Gannon/Guckert gay-prostitute-in-the-White-House scandal. But this may also be a gay sex scandal, as Joseph Cannon points out.

Here's the really intriguing bit: So far, none of these stories have specified the sex of the prostitutes. Read the WSJ piece carefully, and you'll see that writer Scot Paltrow goes out of his way to avoid assigning gender-revelatory pronouns to the "escorts." As I noted in a previous piece (scroll down to "Finally, our story goes gay"), the Washington Blade identified Cunningham -- who has made some rabidly anti-homosexual pronouncements -- as having, shall we say, a secret life.

One of Wilkes few employees appears to be the same fellow who owns a San Diego dance club with a gay clientele. Gay porn has been shot there in "off hours."

There's no point in humiliating Duke further. But don't you want to know who else might have made use of this service...?