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Cunningham Said to Help Two Contractors    [

    Report Spells Out Abuses by Former Congressman
    By Mark Mazzetti
    The New York Times

    Wednesday 18 October 2006

    Washington - Former Representative Randy Cunningham pressured and intimidated staff members of the House Intelligence Committee to help steer more than $70 million in classified federal business to favored military contractors, according to a Congressional investigation made public on Tuesday.

    The investigation found that Mr. Cunningham, a California Republican who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for bribery, repeatedly abused his position on the committee to authorize money for military projects, often over the objections of staff members who criticized some of the spending as wasteful.

    The inquiry also found that despite numerous "red flags" about the propriety of a particular contract for work on a controversial Pentagon counterintelligence program, committee staff members for three years "continued to accept and support Mr. Cunningham's growing requests for this project."

    Mr. Cunningham resigned from Congress in November after pleading guilty to accepting more than $2 million in bribes from military contractors. His plea was mainly related to his activities as a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

    The investigation's report lays out for the first time how Mr. Cunningham maneuvered within the classified world of the Intelligence Committee to win secret contracts for two friends, Brent R. Wilkes and Mitchell J. Wade, both contractors.

    Lawyers for Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Wade declined to comment on the report. A lawyer for Mr. Wilkes was traveling outside the country.

    The report is another embarrassment for Congressional Republicans, who, three weeks before Election Day, are trying to contain the damage from accusations that former Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, made sexually explicit remarks in e-mail messages to Congressional pages. The report on Mr. Cunningham was made public by Representative Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

    Ms. Harman's action drew a rebuke from Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the committee, who called the release "disturbing and beyond the pale."

    In an interview, Ms. Harman said Tuesday that the public had a right to see the conclusions of the inquiry, which was led by Michael Stern, an outside special counsel, and completed in May. She said she had been pushing for months for the committee to produce an unclassified version of the report.

    "I thought it would be out in early August," she said, "well ahead of the election season."

    Only the five-page executive summary of the report was released. The full 59-page report remains classified.

    Several crucial witnesses, including Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Wade, were not interviewed for the investigation.

    Mr. Cunningham's positions on both the Intelligence Committee and the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee gave him an advantage in obtaining classified spending provisions called earmarks.

    In theory, the Intelligence Committee is supposed to authorize classified expenses before the Appropriations Committee puts them into military spending bills. But in practice, the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee has sometimes originated classified earmarks on its own, and the Intelligence Committee depends on the appropriators for its spending requests. By serving on both panels, Mr. Cunningham had influence over the entire classified budget process.

    The inquiry found no evidence that staff members of the Intelligence Committee had profited or expected to profit from Mr. Cunningham's dealings. It also concluded that committee staff members had been suspicious of Mr. Wade and "disinclined to provide him any favorable treatment."

    At the same time, committee staff members repeatedly acceded to Mr. Cunningham's demands to steer money to Mr. Wade's company, MZM Inc. The report describes how Mr. Cunningham worked to gain support within the Intelligence Committee for a program run by MZM at the Counterintelligence Field Activity agency of the Pentagon.

    The counterintelligence program has been criticized by civil liberties groups, which say it authorizes military officials to spy on Americans under the guise of protecting domestic military bases.

    But as a result of a "corrupt conspiracy" between Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Wade, the inquiry found, the Intelligence Committee's ability to monitor the counterintelligence program effectively "appears to have been seriously impeded."

    The report cited Mr. Wilkes's close friendship with Kyle Foggo, formerly a top administrator at the Central Intelligence Agency, who helped manage the agency's dealings with contractors. The inquiry found that Mr. Foggo also worked with Intelligence Committee staff members, including Brant G. Bassett, a former C.I.A. officer, on classified projects relating to the management of the agency.

    Mr. Bassett and Mr. Foggo provided Intelligence Committee members with "trinkets" to win favor for their efforts, including a carpet displaying the words "Global War on Terror." The report said it was not clear whether these activities violated any regulation or law, but it recommended further inquiry.

    The report suggested that Mr. Foggo, who is under investigation by federal authorities in San Diego for his dealings with Mr. Wilkes on a logistics contract, might be facing a broader inquiry than had been known. It said the investigation of Mr. Foggo also involved "several large contracts" managed by an unidentified contractor, who attended a dinner in June 2003 with Mr. Foggo and Mr. Wilkes at the Capital Grille here.

    Mr. Foggo's lawyer, Mark J. MacDougall, declined to comment.

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    David Johnston and David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.

 

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    Cunningham Said to Help Two Contractors
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 17 October 2006

    Washington - Disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham parlayed his seat on the Intelligence Committee into at least $70 million in business for two contractors who in turn paid him millions in bribes, an investigator hired by the panel has concluded.

    The investigator's report, released Tuesday by the committee's top Democrat, found that Cunningham had exploited weaknesses in the system for monitoring secret federal spending.

    It said that he and at least one associate secured the cooperation - or at least the acquiescence - of many people. They included members of Congress and their aides who handled bills that directed money to certain programs, Pentagon officials who awarded the contracts and officials at agencies where the contract work was done.

    "This was a lot of people to persuade, cajole, deceive, pressure, intimidate, bribe or otherwise influence to do what they wanted," the report's executive summary says.

    In a sign of partisan divisions on the committee, California Rep. Jane Harman, its top Democrat, unilaterally released the five-page document after months of disagreement with the committee's chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. Together, the two had initiated the investigation, led by special counsel Michael Stern, and had hoped to release the findings jointly.

    Harman said the committee must examine why "red flags" did not trigger greater scrutiny of Cunningham's activities, and she added that she and Hoekstra had worked on internal changes that must be made permanent. "The goal should be to make certain that no Cunningham of either party should be able to soil our committee again," Harman said in an interview.

    Hoekstra said Cunningham's efforts to enrich himself are "reprehensible" and Harman's decision to release an internal committee document "is disturbing and beyond the pale." Her action "underscores her personal decision to politicize the committee and this critical inquiry," he said.

    Now serving a sentence of more than eight years, Cunningham pleaded guilty in November to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes from alleged coconspirators - government contractors Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes.

    Wade, former president of MZM Inc., has also pleaded guilty to lavishing Cunningham with a yacht, cash, cars, antiques and meals over four years. Wilkes, who has not been charged, was the founder of San Diego-based ADCS Inc.

    Cunningham's attorney, Lee Blalack, and Wade's attorney, Reginald Brown, both declined to comment on the report. Blalack said the committee has not provided him a copy of the document, and Brown said he and his client weren't contacted for the investigation.

    Wilkes' attorney did not immediately return a call for comment.

    The House Intelligence Committee is charged with laying out intelligence spending priorities in an annual authorization bill, based on requests from lawmakers and government agencies. It then falls to the House Appropriations Committee, where Cunningham was also a member, to approve the spending.

    Intelligence authorization bills are often quite broad, but some members are skilled at steering money to certain businesses.

    The investigators found the committee authorized $70 million to $80 million in funding over five years that had been requested by Cunningham on behalf of Wilkes and Wade. When the legislation did not specify that the money go to companies associated with the two contractors, Cunningham still found ways to steer the funds by making his views known or using narrowly tailored language.

    In one case spanning three years, Cunningham got the committee to direct to MZM a contract with a Pentagon unit called Counterintelligence Field Activity, despite aides' worries that it was a "pork barrel project and a waste of taxpayer money," the report says.

    The investigators found that the committee's ability to conduct oversight of the work "appears to have been seriously impeded by the corrupt conspiracy between Cunningham and Wade."

    The executive summary also acknowledges questions that remain unanswered:

• Stern's request to interview Cunningham has never been fulfilled. Harman and Hoekstra wanted to subpoena him, but Hoekstra didn't want to issue a subpoena only to have Cunningham invoke his Fifth Amendment protections, as his attorney has warned he would do. Hoekstra said discussions are continuing about Cunningham's testimony.
  
  
• Stern said "significant information" has remained out of reach. The House Appropriations Committee did not respond to requests to interview some of its staff, and follow-up requests to the Pentagon regarding some of its contracts have not been met.
  
  
• The report sees a need for law enforcement and national security agencies to examine Cunningham's dealings with foreigners. "While our review has not identified any national security breaches resulting from the Cunningham conspiracy, we are aware of dealings that that Cunningham had with certain foreign nationals," it said.

    The investigations into Cunningham, Wade and Wilkes have included a number of figures whose alleged roles are only slowly coming into focus. They include the former No. 3 official at the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who retired this year under a cloud. Five federal agencies are looking into whether he used his position to improperly award classified CIA contracts to Wilkes, a close friend, and to others.

    The report says more investigation is needed into Foggo's dealings with the intelligence panel, given his close relationship with former committee aide Brant Bassett. The investigator highlighted a June 2003 dinner with Bassett, Foggo, Wilkes and an unnamed individual at a Capitol Hill steakhouse.

    The report said the unnamed individual managed a company that is involved in the investigation into whether Foggo abused his position. Through CIA spokespeople, Foggo has denied wrongdoing.

    Foggo and Bassett tried to motivate other committee aides with "gifts of government trinkets such as carpets emblazoned with the words 'Global War on Terror,"' the report said. "At this stage, it is unclear whether these actions violated any law or regulation, but further inquiry is appropriate."

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    Associated Press writers Allison Hoffman in San Diego and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.