Foggo's plea agreement left CIA with a sigh of relief

Frankly, financial melt-down is getting to be a drag. Fortunately, the Bush administration is such a total disaster that there are a lot of interesting pieces of Bush-related crap to distract us from the bail-out. Laura Rozen has been kind enough to provide a particularly juicy story out of the CIA. On Monday Dusty Foggo, the number three manager of the CIA under Porter Goss, pled guilty to wire fraud instead of airing the CIA's dirty laundry about "Duke" Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and his boss, Porter Goss, in public in a federal court.

As court documents laid out in 28 charges, the man known to colleagues as "Dusty," a former logistics officer, served as the CIA's number three official and effectively day to day manager when he badgered the Agency to hire one of his mistresses, identified in the indictment as "E.R.": "On or about March 19, 2005," the indictment reads, "Foggo sent the CIA Acting General Counsel an email stating, in part, that his staff would tag E.R.'s conditional offer of employment as 'ExDir Interest' in order to 'zip her to the top of the pile.'" (E.R. was indeed hired, to a new position Foggo created—deputy director of administration. "ExDir" refers to Foggo's position as CIA Executive Director.)

Foggo's generosity extended beyond his girlfriend: He also, according to the indictment, engineered the hiring of his best childhood friend's company for a CIA contract to provide bottled water to staff in Iraq at a 60 percent price markup over the offer of another contractor (who, under the deal worked out by Foggo, was hired as the subcontractor to actually perform the work). He was frequently dealt into a weekly poker game at various memorable Washington hotels (the Watergate was one) popular with congressmen such as Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), lobbyists, and House intelligence committee staff members; as well as—according to other court documents—prostitutes. That childhood friend, Brent Wilkes, also turned out to be among two defense contractors bribing House intelligence committee member Duke Cunningham with tens of thousands of dollars in antiques, travel, fancy meals, house payments, and hookers in exchange for earmarks steering more than $100 million worth of government contracts to Wilkes' San Diego-based firm, ADCS.

But it wasn't the hookers, the card games, the water contract, or even the staff mistress that concerned the Agency's executives when Foggo spared them by entering a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud Monday. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the 27 other charges and requested only three years prison time out of the 20 Foggo could have faced. ("Your lawyers did a good job for you," US District judge James C. Cacheris told Foggo after he accepted his guilty plea, with evident understatement.)

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo's discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network, for whatever needs the CIA has for secret planes now that the network it used for extraordinary rendition flights has been outed. "In or about December 2004," the Foggo indictment says, "Foggo discussed with Wilkes and J.C. the idea that Foggo might be able to get Wilkes a classified government contract to supply air support services to the CIA…. In or about January 2005, Wilkes directed various ADCS employees to begin developing an air support proposal that would be designed to answer the CIA's classified needs as outlined by Foggo."

The indictment continues: "On or about February 3, 2005, an employee of Wilkes' corporation emailed J.C. with an offer to update him on their work developing the air support proposal. …" (J.C., the indictment explains, is Wilkes' nephew, whom I've identified as Joel G. Combs, the nominal head of a Wilkes' front company, Archer Logistics.) The "classified air support contract" and its implied purposes for renditions are among the truly damaging national security secrets, along with the methods the CIA uses to create front companies and dole out black contracts, that the CIA and Bush White House would have been anxious not to have exposed, especially in a trial set to take place the day before the election in a suburban DC courtroom within a ten-minute drive of the entire national security press corps.

Needless to say the CIA is heaving a great sigh of relief. The only real loss is that individuals like myself who are curious about the processes the CIA uses to perform its Intelligence magic will not have all the dirty laundry to root through. But no doubt the CIA management has a lot of better things to do that keep those of us spy story junkies who are interested in Intelligence procedures entertained.

(Laura Rozen has another interesting article here providing some interesting gossip about her reporting on the Foggo story.)

Washington Post reports on fraud at the National Republican Congressional Committee

The Washington Post provides background for the earlier report that the Financial Director of the NRCC, Christopher Ward, has apparently been embezzling money form the committee and perhaps from the campaign committees of many of the Republican Congressmen whose political fund raising committees he was director of. Some interesting vignettes:

• In the last eight years, Ward is listed as treasurer for 83 GOP fundraising committees.
• He has supervised committees that raised over "..$400 million, $368 million of it at the National Republican Congressional Committee."
• "Republican lawmakers and former committee staff members now allege that Ward fabricated audits and other financial documents for 2003 to 2006, some of which were turned over to a Wachovia Bank branch in McLean in October 2006, when the NRCC borrowed $8 million in last-minute money for congressional campaigns."
• "Rep. Peter T. King (N.Y.) ... said in an interview that he has discovered that Ward paid himself $6,000 in consulting fees from King's political action committee in 2007 -- though King believed that he had shuttered the committee early last year. Upon learning of the NRCC investigation, King said he found that his PAC remained open all of last year. Ward paid himself the fees from King's PAC, which received just three contributions and dispensed one check in 2007, FEC records show."
li>The financial problems at the cash-strapped NRCC led "...retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), who chaired the NRCC for four years earlier this decade" to say "The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they'd take it off the shelf."
• "In 2005, 2006 and most of 2007, the NRCC paid Ward $80,000 to $90,000 a year, but he was one of only two full-time aides there who were allowed to work as outside consultants to lawmakers. That doubled his salary, according to a review of records compiled by CQ MoneyLine, a Web site that tracks campaign finances.
  
  In 2007, for example, Ward's consulting firm collected $100,000 from the 19 PACs and committees for which he served as treasurer. Last October, Ward left the NRCC as treasurer but remained on the payroll as a $7,500-a-month consultant."
• "Any material misstatement on a bank application is a federal crime," said Stanley Brand, a Washington defense lawyer. He said the committee probably contacted the FBI in an attempt to portray itself as the victim of a crime -- punishable by as much as $1 million in fines and 30 years in prison -- and to inoculate NRCC officials from prosecution.
  
  "They blew the whistle on themselves, which is what you'd do to protect yourself," he said.

The discovery of the fraud is one any Auditor will recognize as a classic. The fraud worked as long as the crook was in position to control all the records. Ward's reputation as a workaholic is also classic. An individual conducting a fraud cannot afford to let anyone else work on the books they are stealing from, so they do all the work themselves, rarely taking any time away from the job. Fraud requires a lot of overtime. Here is how the fraud surfaced:

The first inkling of trouble came when Conaway took over the NRCC's auditing subcommittee in early 2007. A certified public accountant himself, Conaway said in interviews that he asked for something considered routine in the corporate world: an audit of NRCC books for the previous year by an outside firm and a meeting with the auditors.

"My expectation was that that frank meeting would take three minutes," Conaway said.

Instead, Ward kept putting him off, he said. "Okay, we'll get it for the next meeting, we'll get it for you," Ward said, according to Conaway, who became suspicious of what he described as Ward's "passive aggressive" behavior.

He said Ward avoided the issue for months, until January, when Ward told Conaway that he and GOP lawmakers would meet with auditors. But Ward canceled the meeting 30 minutes before it was scheduled to begin.

Republicans called the outside firm and found out that no audits had been done since 2003. After looking at the documents Ward had given them for each year, they determined that he had fabricated them, according to Davis and other officials with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This is why auditors want everyone working with accounting records to take a vacation of at least two weeks a year, so that someone else goes through the books while they are gone. Rep Conway, as a CPA himself, did what should always be done when someone new takes over supervision of the books. He asked to see the audit records and speak to the auditors who conducted oversight of the records. That's how fraud is either prevented or discovered.

So how did Christopher J. Ward become an embezzler? There are some clues in his career, but no obvious answers from current reports. He got his Political Science degree in 1990 and immediately began work in Republican politics, moving to the NRCC in the middle 90's shortly after the Gingrich-inspired take-over of the House of Representatives. He was good at his job. Ward was the guy that Republican Congressmen in trouble were steered to in order to help them get out of the trouble, an example being recently indicted Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi.

The cultural environment Ward worked in cannot be ignored. Ward's time at the NRCC went along with the Abramoff scandal, the Duke Cunningham scandal and the Bob Ney scandal, just to name the ones presently in prison. In a culture in which Republicans who believed they should each have the right to collect as much money as they could get their hands on flourished, and Ward was a key enabler of many of those who moved closest to being caught, he certainly must have felt that his expertise and efforts deserved as much financial reward as he could collect. It should be no surprise that his career bloomed as the Republican controlled Congress, and his fraud was discovered after the Republicans were removed from control of Congress.

It would be hard to overlook the moral lesson about Republican control of government in this fraud, but I'm sure the Republicans will be working hard to both obfuscate and overlook the lesson. Unfortunately, their opponents, the Democrats will be too polite to bring it up.

Christopher J. Ward has added his name to those representative of the control of the federal government by movement conservatives. Others in the pantheon include (in no particular order) Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, Mark Foley, Steven Biskupic,
Tom DeLay, Rachel Paulose, Alberto Gonzalez, "Scooter" Libby, John Doolittle, Jack Abramoff and many, many more.

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The reporting on this story by Washington Post Staff Writer Paul Kane is excellent, and he should be congratulated for it.

Here is why Carol Lam was removed as U.S. Attorney, San Diego

Nov 26, 2007 - The most recent analysis of record from the Wilkes trial gives Emptywheel a lot to discuss. This came from the transcripts and subpoenas in the Wilkes case. Emptywheel at the Next Hurrah has been tracking the story. Below are earlier posts in time sequence.

The traditional media will not be discussing this because the CIA, the Department of Justice and the White House all don't want it publicized.

Apr 27, 2007 - About that FBI Special Agent In Charge. FBI Special Agent in Charge Dzwilewski commented on what happened to cause Carol Lam's dismissal and the manner it which it was done. Six weeks later he retired. Asked if there was any pressure to resign, Dzwilewski said: “I can't speak for what's behind all that, what's the driving force behind this or the rationale. I guarantee politics is involved.”

May 08, 2007 - The Foggo-Wilkes Leaks.

May 11, 2007 - Emptywheel looks at the Leaks. About that DOJ Leak.

Aug 09, 2007 - In The Leak Wars: Revisiting the Pre-Indictment Leaks. EmptyWheel looks more deeply into the alleged media leaks and the connection to the trial of Kontogiannis.

Aug o8, 2007 - Carol Lam did not know why she was dismissed, even after she left. But Elston at DoJ accused her of leaking the reasons she was removed to the press. The Leak Wars: Elston Accuses Lam IN actual practice, Lam was fired because she was threatening to indict Foggo, the third ranking man at CIA and Kontogianis, an individual who the CIA was protecting because he had been laundering money they were using for operations.

Wilkes, Foggo trial may move to Virginia

For those of us following the fall-out from the bribing of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R - CA) the San Diego Union-Tribune has an interesting story:

By Jose Luis Jimenez
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

6:09 p.m. November 19, 2007

SAN DIEGO – A federal judge Monday hinted the trial of a key player in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal may move from San Diego to the East Coast.

Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes and Kyle 'Dusty' Foggo – the former third-highest-ranking official at the CIA – are charged with numerous counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

They have pleaded not guilty.

During the hearing, Judge Larry Alan Burns said moving the case to the Eastern District of Virginia – the main courthouse is in Alexandria, Va. – would make it easier on the witnesses, the majority of which are on the East Coast.

Further, judges there are experienced in dealing with cases involving classified information that needs to be shared with the defense. Foggo's position in the CIA has made classified information a key issue.

It sure would be nice if this trial were to get hot, oh, say in the Summer of 2008. It will very probably provide a show with an all corrupt Republican cast.

Briber of Congressman fires shot across the bow

Brent Wilkes, currently being tried for bribing former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), has subpoenaed thirteen senior Congressmen to testify at his bribery trial. The members will decline to comply with the subpoenas.

The list of Congressmen as provided by The Politico is:

• Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Il) former Speaker of the House;
• Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) current House Minority Whip;
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), former chairman of the Appropriations Committee;
• Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), former chairman of the Armed Services Committee;
• Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), former Intelligence Committee chairman;
• Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) current Armed Services Committee Chairman;
• Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) current Intelligence Committee Chairman;
• Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), current chairman of the Defense subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee;
• Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA);
• Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA);
• Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA);
• Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI); and
• Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Il).

Wilkes is known to have provided a lot of money in bribes to Rep. Cunningham. This list amounts to an accusation that all of these Representatives have also taken bribes from Wilkes.

The list appears to have become available when the House of Representatives voted to decline to permit the court to enforce its subpoenas on these members. Representatives all reported that House Rules did not permit the members to respond to the subpoenas. (See TPM Muckraker.)

Have any ex-House members also been subpoenaed? For example Tom DeLay? If not, then it would be reasonable to assume that this was a form of political blackmail that Wilkes' attorneys were trying to gain protection for the court.

I guess those Representatives who were subpoenaed see a mass denial to appear at Wilkes' trial as politically preferable to any of them showing up and taking the Fifth Amendment. Still, this vote puts the entire House of Representatives on record as defending those of their members who have taken bribes and sold their vote. [Bad guess. Cynical as I am, there was apparently no vote for me to rail against.]

This is still a very significant accusation from the man currently incarcerated ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham named as his briber that the entire House of Representatives was highly corrupt. From TPM Muckraker:

"Wilkes came out last year to offer the defense that he didn't bribe lawmakers -- it was the other way around: they shook him down. "Transactional lobbying" (i.e. no free favors) was his phrase for it. Perhaps the subpoenas were part of that defense strategy?"

Since Wilke's trial has been delayed and will probably not start until early next year I am sure that we will hear more about this.

Details on Randy "Duke" Cunningham's corruption and that of the Republican Party

How crooked was Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the most corrupt Congressman ever imprisoned? What did Brent Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, and the Greek mystery man, Thomas Kontogiannis, get for their bribes? Cunningham has been talking to the FBI and other feds from his prison cell in Tuscon where he is serving the longest prison sentence ever given to a sitting Congressman. The San Diego Union Tribune has just published a story with some of the bigger answers. George E. Condon Jr. and Marcus Stern of COPLEY NEWS SERVICE reported on two days of FBI interviews with Cunningham in February, 2007. The currently indicted Brent Wilkes, who is currently awaiting trial for bribery charges will be less than happy at the information.

Here are some highlights from the story:

Cunningham was able to promote defense contracts for favored companies through the use of legislative “earmarks,” provisions lawmakers could slip anonymously into spending bills without debate, discussion or disclosure that benefit interests in their districts or their political supporters Wilkes has said a $100,000 payment he made to Cunningham in 2000, was not a bribe, but instead was to purchase Cunningham's river yacht, the Kelly C.

“Cunningham said that there was never a sale,” said the FBI report. “Cunningham stated that he and Wilkes created the cover story of a boat sale to explain, if anyone ever found out and asked, his receipt of $100,000 from Wilkes.” Cunningham told investigators that Wilkes fully understood that there would be “no actual change in ownership” of the yacht. The two men agreed to divide the $100,000 into two checks because both “felt that the smaller checks might be less noticeable.”

The documents show that Cunningham had first asked Wilkes for $550,000.

“Wilkes said no to the $550,000 but then countered with an offer of $100,000 if Cunningham would ensure that the support and earmarks would continue to happen. Cunningham promised Wilkes that he would 'fight like hell' for Wilkes/ADCS.”

The FBI report made the point that Cunningham was clear about the quid pro quo:

“Cunningham stated that, by 2000, he had already been receiving numerous benefits from Wilkes that included such things as vacation trips, liquor, cash/maintenance money. According to Cunningham, in return for these benefits, he had been helping Wilkes/ADCS in their efforts to secure government contracts.”

This also sheds light on two other individuals known to be involved with bribing Cunnigham.

His [Cunningham's] admissions to the investigators – who were from the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. attorneys' office and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service – also shed light on the actions of others implicated in the scandal.

They include Mitchell Wade, president of MZM, Inc. in Washington, who pleaded guilty in the case but has not yet been sentenced, and Thomas Kontogiannis, a New York developer accused of laundering the bribe money.

Kontogiannis pleaded guilty to providing $1.1 million in mortgages to Cunningham for a Rancho Santa Fe mansion, even though he knew the house was purchased with proceeds from illegal activity. The plea was made in February but was not made public until last month. [Snip]

Cunningham was well placed steer military intelligence contracts to Wilkes and Wade because he was on the House defense appropriations subcommittee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The story also provides more information on what the mystery man, Kontogionnis, did and what he was after from Cunningham. This further information comes from a 75-page affidavit filed by the FBI in support of a search warrant.

The FBI stated that:

• More than $1 million in bribes were laundered by being sent to Kontogiannis instead of going directly to Cunningham. Investigators identified at least 70 separate bank accounts maintained by Kontogiannis at only one bank.
• Despite all his many businesses, Kontogiannis has not filed a tax return since 2001.
• For the first time, investigators shed light on what Kontogiannis expected to get from Cunningham – help on a potential sale of fighter jets to his native Greece.

This was part of what the Department of Justice and President Bush were covering up when they fired Carol lam. The two following links provide more details and links.

• What is happening with the investigation into firing of Carol Lam, USA San Diego?
• CIA official, contractor, face new corruption indictments

Connections to the U.S. Attorney Purge

Today’s story tells of how and why Cunningham was bribed, but reading between the lines it suggests some of the links to the firing of San Diego U.S. Attorney, Carol Lam. U.S. Attorney Lam successfully prosecuted Cunningham, and as she was leaving her job after being fired, indicted two of the bribers, Wade and Wilkes, as well as the number three official at the CIA, Dusty Foggo. This story sheds a good deal of light into Wades and Wilkes.

This story sheds no real light into the case against the indicted CIA official, Dusty Foggo, however. The details of the connection of Foggo to this story seems to be concealed by the classified status of his work at the CIA, but the report that would declassify the relevant information is bottled up in Congress. See

• the indictments of Wade and Wilkes are being relatively actively pursued but
• the indictment of Dusty Foggo appears to be being slow-walked by the current U.S. Attorney in charge of his case.

Information on the "Foggo" part of the story is probably in the internal investigation of the House Intelligence Committee (on which Cunningham sat) which has been bottled up by the former House intel committee chairman, Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) and its current chairman, Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx). That report must have a good deal of additional information that supplements the currently reported information on the effects of bribing “Duke” Cunningham. [h/t to Laura Rozen.]

This story also sheds some light on how the related corruption investigations of Rep. Lewis (CA - R) and Rep. John Doolittle (CA - R) were sidetracked or slowed by the Republican politician through the Department of Justice and the White House. Besides the firing of U.S. Attorney for San Diego, Carol Lam, U.S. Attorney Debra Yang of Los Angeles (investigating Rep Lewis) was hired by Lewis' attorneys for an astounding $1.5 million up-front bonus and a partnership. Until Debra Yang took the offered bribe job, she was apparently on the list to also be fired on Pearl Harbor Day of 2007. This connection has not been adequately investigated or reported yet.

The broader corruption of the Republican Party

"Duke" Cunningham's corruption, while extreme, is not unique to the Republican Party. The only question remaining on William Jefferson (LA-D) is when the indictments will be filed. But Jefferson’s case is a single situation, one which has not brought out every defensive measure of the Democratic political party to which he professes allegiance. What is unique, and is demonstrated by the Cunningham case, is the list of extreme and frequently criminal measures the Republican Party has taken to bottle up and even derail the investigations and protect their own.

Rep. Daryll Issa (CA-R), also from San Diego, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General complaining about U.S. Attorney Carol Lam in an effort to get her to back off the Cunningham investigation. The timing of his action suggests that it was triggered by U.S. Attorney’s indictment of Cunningham. Interestingly, Issa's letter was supported by Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, and Bill Thomas, Republican politicians who were threatened by Lam-led investigations. There is little doubt that Issa's complaint was a factor in getting Carol Lam fired. Whether Issa also complained to the White House is not at this time known. He certainly worked to sidetrack investigations into his fellow Republicans.

A similar complaint from Sen. Pete Domenici (NM-R) to the Attorney General (and to the White House) led to the firing of U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias. (see also Domenici Says He Contacted Prosecutor.) Then there is the case of U.S. Attorney of Arizona Paul Charlton who was similarly removed as part of the Dec 7, 2006 firing. He was investigating Rep. Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona. Several other of the U.S. Attorney's fired on Peal Harbor Day, 2006 were involved in similar investigations of Republican corruption.

Clearly Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was not similarly protected from the powers of the Republican-controlled U.S. Department of Justice.

Siegelman, a Democrat, was convicted last year of bribery and other charges. He began serving a seven-year prison sentence last month.

Democrats have long maintained that his prosecution was politically motivated, and recent allegations that White House officials were steering decisions at the Justice Department have added weight to the claims.

Last month, a GOP lawyer who once worked on the campaign of Republican Gov. Bob Riley signed a sworn affidavit saying she overheard conversations among campaign officials in 2002 suggesting that the White House was involved in Siegelman's prosecution. She has offered to testify to any investigative agency or in court.

Karl Rove has been directly connected to pushing the prosecution of Gov. Siegelman.

The documents in these cases all show that the Department of Justice under Alberto Gonzales was the action agency in the removals of the U.S. Attorneys, but it is clear that the White House (See also ”White House Backed U.S. Attorney Firings, Officials Say “.) was very involved and certainly approved the actions, if not instigating them. There isn't much documentary proof of this, but that is because the White House has been very careful not to leave documentary evidence. This explains why over 50 top White House officials used emails provided by the Republican National Committee rather than the official White House emails which, by law, must be archived and cannot be destroyed. Since documentary evidence is so sparse, the key to finding out how involved the White House had been will be testimony by top White House officials. Recently resigned White House Counsel Harriet Miers certainly knows exactly how involved the White House was. That is why the White House has to fight to keep her from testifying. U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales and "Scooter" Libby are also likely to be able to provide the evidence that proves how crooked George Bush, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have been. That is the core of the battle against this White House, and that is what the Republican Party as an organization is corruptly attempting to prevent investigations of corrupt Republican Party politicians while pushing for selective prosecutions for purely political reasons against Democratic Party officials or for officials in Democratic administrations.

The testimony from Randy "Duke" Cunningham is going to be a real blow to the Republican Party. As corrupt as Cunningham was, the Republicans generally have provided a network of support to protect him and others like him. This goes far beyond just one man. It is the entire Republican Party. It has become a criminal enterprise rather than a political party.

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Talking Points Memo provides links to

• The FBI report on the interview with Cunningham


• the 75 page FBI affidavit described above.


• The TPM Muckraker Duke Cunningham file


• The TPM Muckraker Wilkes file.

"Duke" Cunningham - the most corrupt Congressman ever.

Ken Silverstein at Harpers Magazine writes about the greed and corruption which is on display in the new book The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught. He asked Marcus Stern, one of the authors of the book, six questions about Cunningham and published the reported answers in his article in Harpers.

I had not realized that Cunningham was so blatant as to sit down to lunch with Mitchell Wade (the man who was bribing him,) pull out a piece of Congressional stationary, and list on one side the amount of the contract he would get for Wade (in $ Millions) and on the other side list how much he expected back as a "gift" for each contract. For the first $16 million contract Wade was to provide a yacht. (Wade did provide the yacht, later renamed the "Duke - Stir" by Cunningham.) Then Cunningham expected Wade to give him $50,000 for each further million dollars of contract up to $50 million. After that there was a volume discount. For contracts above the $50 million total Cunningham only expected a $25,000 "gift" per million dollars of contract.

How utterly crass! A volume discount? On bribes? You give volume discounts to favored customers to keep them from going to the competitors. Who was Cunningham competing with? [Think about it.] Then the idiot Cunningham actually wrote all this down. After all that, he even had Mitchell Wade pay for the meal. That was item one in the article.

Questions two and three are quite interesting, but question four is especially so. It is where the Marcus was asked how early in his life Cunningham displayed his greed.

We looked at his childhood in the 1940s–he was an average kid, maybe with a penchant for bullying, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then in 1972 he shot down three MIGs over Vietnam in seven minutes and was shot down himself. He returned home to the U.S. a war hero, to parades and honors and awards. Almost immediately you begin to see a mixture of greed and entitlement on his part. He was quickly nominated for the Navy Cross, the highest medal the Navy awards, but he and his radioman went to their commander, Ron McKeown, and said they wanted to hold out for the Medal of Honor. McKeown was stunned, he told them you don’t hold out for the Medal of Honor, you die for it. McKeown told us that Cunningham wanted the Medal of Honor because it came with a lifetime stipend, which we calculated would have been about $100 per month. Under great pressure he accepted the Navy Cross but according to his wife he always felt cheated by that.

I find Item 5 especially interesting.

5. Has Cunningham expressed remorse for his crimes?
Cunningham feels railroaded and widely blames his predicament on Mitch Wade, his co-conspirator, and on the media. At his sentencing on March 3, 2006, he told the court that repentance will be a lifelong endeavor, that “no man has ever been more sorry,” and that he “accepted responsibility” for his crimes. But after he was sentenced and taken away to a jail in San Diego, he told the deputy federal marshal who put him in his cell, a guy named Dave Dallaire, that it was all a misunderstanding and that he had been “ramrodded.” His wife, Nancy Cunningham, said in an interview with Kitty Kelley last year that he claimed he was innocent, had been railroaded by the government, that he had signed the plea agreement under duress, and that he even thinks he will pardoned by President Bush. He lied up until the moment that he pleaded guilty and engaged in cover-up practices, clumsy as they were. There’s no reason to think the tears he shed in court were genuine. I received a letter from him last September that was filled with rage at the media and at Mitch Wade.

The Psychiatrists have a label for this kind of behavior. It is "Narcissistic Personality Disorder." Here is a good thumbnail definition:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a pattern of self-centered or egotistical behavior that shows up in thinking and behavior in a lot of different situations and activities. People with NPD won't (or can't) change their behavior even when it causes problems at work or when other people complain about the way they act, or when their behavior causes a lot of emotional distress to others (or themselves? None of my narcissists ever admit to being distressed by their own behavior -- they always blame other people for any problems). This pattern of self-centered or egotistical behavior is not caused by current drug or alcohol use, head injury, acute psychotic episodes, or any other illness, but has been going on steadily at least since adolescence or early adulthood. [ From Narcissistic Personality Disorder.]

There are nine criteria in Paragraph 301.81 of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual IV (DSM-IV) that apply to this diagnosis. A person meets the diagnosis if they meet five of the nine criteria.

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

Translation: Grandiosity is the hallmark of narcissism. So what is grandiose?

The simplest everyday way that narcissists show their exaggerated sense of self-importance is by talking about family, work, life in general as if there is nobody else in the picture. Whatever they may be doing, in their own view, they are the star, and they give the impression that they are bearing heroic responsibility for their family or department or company, that they have to take care of everything because their spouses or co-workers are undependable, uncooperative, or otherwise unfit. They ignore or denigrate the abilities and contributions of others and complain that they receive no help at all; they may inspire your sympathy or admiration for their stoicism in the face of hardship or unstinting self-sacrifice for the good of (undeserving) others. But this everyday grandiosity is an aspect of narcissism that you may never catch on to unless you visit the narcissist's home or workplace and see for yourself that others are involved and are pulling their share of the load and, more often than not, are also pulling the narcissist's share as well. An example is the older woman who told me with a sigh that she knew she hadn't been a perfect mother but she just never had any help at all -- and she said this despite knowing that I knew that she had worn out and discarded two devoted husbands and had lived in her parents' pocket (and pocketbook) as long as they lived, quickly blowing her substantial inheritance on flaky business schemes. Another example is claiming unusual benefits or spectacular results from ordinary effort and investment, giving the impression that somehow the narcissist's time and money are worth more than other people's. [Here is an article about recognizing and coping with narcissism in the workplace; it is rather heavy on management jargon and psychobabble, but worth reading. "The Impact of Narcissism on Leadership and Sustainability" by Bruce Gregory, Ph.D. "When the narcissistic defense is operating in an interpersonal or group setting, the grandiose part does not show its face in public. In public it presents a front of patience, congeniality, and confident reasonableness."]

In popular usage, the terms narcissism, narcissist, and narcissistic denote absurd vanity and are applied to people whose ambitions and aspirations are much grander than their evident talents. Sometimes these terms are applied to people who are simply full of themselves -- even when their real achievements are spectacular. Outstanding performers are not always modest, but they aren't grandiose if their self-assessments are realistic; e.g., Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, was notorious for boasting "I am the greatest!" and also pointing out that he was the prettiest, but he was the greatest and the prettiest for a number of years, so his self-assessments weren't grandiose. Some narcissists are flamboyantly boastful and self-aggrandizing, but many are inconspicuous in public, saving their conceit and autocratic opinions for their nearest and dearest. Common conspicuous grandiose behaviors include expecting special treatment or admiration on the basis of claiming (a) to know important, powerful or famous people or (b) to be extraordinarily intelligent or talented. As a real-life example, I used to have a neighbor who told his wife that he was the youngest person since Sir Isaac Newton to take a doctorate at Oxford. The neighbor gave no evidence of a world-class education, so I looked up Newton and found out that Newton had completed his baccalaureate at the age of twenty-two (like most people) and spent his entire academic career at Cambridge. The grandiose claims of narcissists are superficially plausible fabrications, readily punctured by a little critical consideration. The test is performance: do they deliver the goods? (There's also the special situation of a genius who's also strongly narcissistic, as perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright. Just remind yourself that the odds are that you'll meet at least 1000 narcissists for every genius you come across.) [More on grandiosity.]

2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

Translation: Narcissists cultivate solipsistic or "autistic" fantasies, which is to say that they live in their own little worlds (and react with affront when reality dares to intrude).

3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

Translation: Narcissists think that everyone who is not special and superior is worthless. By definition, normal, ordinary, and average aren't special and superior, and so, to narcissists, they are worthless.

4. Requires excessive admiration

Translation: Excessive in two ways: they want praise, compliments, deference, and expressions of envy all the time, and they want to be told that everything they do is better than what others can do. Sincerity is not an issue here; all that matters are frequency and volume.

5. Has a sense of entitlement

Translation: They expect automatic compliance with their wishes or especially favorable treatment, such as thinking that they should always be able to go first and that other people should stop whatever they're doing to do what the narcissists want, and may react with hurt or rage when these expectations are frustrated.

6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends

Translation: Narcissists use other people to get what they want without caring about the cost to the other people.

7. Lacks empathy

Translation: They are unwilling to recognize or sympathize with other people's feelings and needs. They "tune out" when other people want to talk about their own problems.
In clinical terms, empathy is the ability to recognize and interpret other people's emotions. Lack of empathy may take two different directions: (a) accurate interpretation of others' emotions with no concern for others' distress, which is characteristic of psychopaths; and (b) the inability to recognize and accurately interpret other people's emotions, which is the NPD style. This second form of defective empathy may (rarely) go so far as alexithymia, or no words for emotions, and is found with psychosomatic illnesses, i.e., medical conditions in which emotion is experienced somatically rather than psychically. People with personality disorders don't have the normal body-ego identification and regard their bodies only instrumentally, i.e., as tools to use to get what they want, or, in bad states, as torture chambers that inflict on them meaningless suffering. Self-described narcissists who've written to me say that they are aware that their feelings are different from other people's, mostly that they feel less, both in strength and variety (and which the narcissists interpret as evidence of their own superiority); some narcissists report "numbness" and the inability to perceive meaning in other people's emotions.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him

Translation: No translation needed.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes

Translation: They treat other people like dirt.

This pattern seems quite obvious to me. My second wife was a narcissist. I was unaware of this until after our divorce, when I tried to understand what went wrong. Oddly enough, she got her Masters in Social Work while we were married and it was she who introduced me to the DSM-IIIR (upgraded now to the DSM-IV.) She met eight of the nine criteria.

The key is the grandiosity. Very clearly this describes Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Another element that shines out like the headlight from an oncoming freight train is the refusal to take responsibility for what happens to him. It is always the fault of someone else. The whole thing is wrapped around ego defense. There is an inherent feeling of inadequacy, and the defenses include presenting (and believing) the grandiose fantasies and never, never, never admitting any failure. With such perfection (unrecognized by lesser people) it always must be the fault of some other person.

These people are really dangerous. They also do not ever look to themselves as the cause of the problems they face, so they can never get better. They lie, they manipulate, they grab what they want and they ignore the havoc they leave behind themselves by blaming others for going after them. See it?

Cunningham is utterly blatant. G. W. Bush has so many protective handlers around him that it is difficult to be sure he fits the same pattern. But I strongly suspect that he does.

Book Review - Seth Hettana's book on "Duke" Cunningham

Ken Silverstein reviews the upcoming book on the most corrupt Congressman in the last half century. The book is Feasting on the Spoils: The Life and Times of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, History's Most Corrupt Congressman. It will be released for sale in July.

Mr. Silverstein focuses more on Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and his sexual proclivities, then drifts off to the use of sex in CIA and Soviet spy operations. As a long-time spy novel reader I found the discussion quite interesting, but I'd sort of like to know more about the book itself.

When the book is closer to being sold we may learn more about its qualities. As it is, it is a story that cries to be pulled together and presented.

Rep. Doolitle is in the investigator's sights now.

Damn! These investigations are slow! If this were a TV movie, it would only have taken two hours to get this far, and they even throw in commercials!

California Rep. John Doolittle (CA - R) has been talked about as a target of investigations for corruption since 2005, and his close association with Abramoff has made it clear that there is more than just smoke there. But now everything seems to be heating up. Kevin Ring has just resigned suddenly with no notice from his lucrative job as a lobbyist. This is usually the pattern just before a person makes a deal with the investigators for a lighter sentence if he will give up someone higher on the food chain. In Ring's case it is going to be his former employer, Rep. Doolittle.

TPM Muckraker has the story.

All I can say is, it's about time. Now when does Rep. Jerry Lewis (CA - R) get his turn in the barrel?

Carol Lam was not an innocent victim.

An anonymous diary at dKos gives a brief recent history of Ron Nehring, the head of the San Diego County Republican Party before he was recently appointed head of the California Republican Party. He got Carol Lam appointed as San Diego US attorney, then had her investigate the then-dominant Democratic Party county office-holders publicly while the Republicans used those indictments to replace the Democrats with Republicans. His appointment as head of the California Republican Party is an effort to drag the California Republican Party back to the right, after Schwartzenegger went off the reservation and moved to the middle.

Nehring has tight connections to Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, and was close to both Jack Abramoff and now-convicted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. US attorney Carol Lam slow-walked the investigation into Cunningham, but he was so over-the-top in his corruption that she couldn't derail the investigation and conviction.

If I lived in San Diego I'd be writing a book about this. As it is, I can only get snippets like this diary (and Digby's discussion of it) as they reach the more national news.

Daryll Issa was a key in removing Carol Lam

Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah goes back into the details of what caused the removal of Carol Lam, US attorney at San Diego and the prosecutor of Issa's compadre, Ex-Rep. and now Felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

It looks like the California Republican Representatives were really afraid of Carol Lam, especially when the investigation expanded to Rep. Jerry Lewis.

Daryl Issa received an anonymous report from someone in DHS back in 2005.

"Issa, after having sat on the report for at least six months, suddenly saw fit to publish it--and do a media campaign around it--just a week or so after Lam's investigation of Cunningham expanded to include Jerry Lewis and Dusty Foggo. What a remarkable coincidence, huh?

But I wonder if there isn't another coincidence here. Issa received this document back in fall 2005, right? I wonder if it was anytime around the time that a bunch of Republican Congressmen from California wrote a letter complaining about Lam's immigration prosecution policies. I ask that question, you see, because a whole bunch of those who signed that letter are among those who were targets of what would be--or might have been--Lam's expanded investigation. The signers include:

• Duke Cunningham
• Jerry Lewis
• Richard Pombo
• John Doolittle
• Duncan Hunter
• Bill Thomas

A nice bunch, those CA Republicans.

I just thought the coincidence of timing worth mentioning."

A few more revelations like this and we will know why the White House was willing to do something as strange and inflamatory as firing the gaggle of US attorneys.

The answer begins to look like it was a case of desperation. They feel the noose closing in on them.

Ethics-Schmethics. I took the damned class 8 times!

In connection with the Randy "Duke" Cunningham case, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, until recently the third highest ranking official at the CIA, has been indicted for stearing contracts to a company he had investments in. Here is an interesting part:

Foggo, who retired last year as the third-ranking CIA official, served two years as a "deputy ethics official" and sat through ethics training eight times, according to the federal grand jury indictment handed down last week in San Diego. But Foggo covered up gifts and a job offer he received from his alleged co-conspirator, the indictment asserts. And it quotes an e-mail in which he seems to suggest ethics reporting requirements are burdensome.[Snip]

The 11-count indictment, to which Foggo and Wilkes pleaded not guilty, alleges that Foggo set up meetings for Wilkes with other CIA officials and contractors to grease the skids for Wilkes' companies to receive contracts, including at least one case in which Wilkes wasn't the low bidder. The grand jury charges Foggo expected and received expensive meals and gifts from Wilkes, as well as vacations to Scotland and Hawaii.

Also in 2002, Wilkes offered Foggo a "high-level, high-paying position" with one of Wilkes' companies, where he reserved an office for Foggo in the executive suite, according to the indictment.

Foggo didn't mentioned Wilkes' gifts or job offer on two mandatory annual financial disclosure forms asking about gifts, trips and "future employment," according to the indictment. It says Foggo in an e-mail, where he attached one such completed form, wrote to the ethics officer processing the forms: "Having been the 'Ethic's Guy' in both the (Directorate of Science and Technology) and the (Directorate of Administration), I wish you the best with this annual exercise."

I mean, he submitted the damned ethics paperwork, even though it was an interference with his work. What more could a poor oppressed Republican do?