Mitchell Wade, that other high-profile (alleged) briber of Duke Cunningham, got hit with a $1 million fine from the Federal Election Commission, what the commission calls "the second largest penalty ever paid in the 32-year history of the FEC."

Update: We neglected to mention that the settlement was a result of a complaint from watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The fine is for reimbursing employees at his firm MZM for $78,000 in contributions they made to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and ex-Rep. Katharine Harris (R-FL). Another MZM exec, Richard Berglund, got hit with a $42,000 fine. Both of them have already pled guilty to criminal charges for the scheme. Berglund was sentenced earlier this year to a year of probation and $5,000 in fines. Wade continues to cooperate with the government in its ongoing investigation of his bribery activities, recently testifying against fellow contractor Brent Wilkes at his trial.

Although Jim King, formerly an aide to Michael Hayden when the CIA chief ran the National Security Agency, was also under investigation by the FEC for his contributions at MZM, the FEC did not to fine him.

The FEC makes a point of saying that it uncovered no evidence that either Goode or Harris knew about the scheme. Wade wooed both of them in order to get earmarks for MZM facilities. In both cases, he was successful -- only Harris bungled the job and failed to land the $10 million she was seeking. Goode requested a total of $9 million for the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center in his Virginia district, which MZM was hired to run. Unfortunately, the center folded after Wade pled guilty, sticking the town, Martinsville, with the bill.

The Quakers can sleep easier. This morning, the Pentagon announced that it's canceling a database created to monitor threats to Defense Department installations in the U.S. that ended up compiling lists of citizens engaged in peaceful, constitutionally-protected protest speech. For good measure, the Talon database was run by an intelligence office that doled out millions to crooked defense contractor MZM.

Talon, which compiled unverified threat information related to domestic Pentagon-run facilities, will go out of business on September 17. That's a long-planned obsolescence: in April, Defense intelligence chief James Clapper stated that the Pentagon needed to "lay to rest the distrust and concern about the department's commitment to civil rights." And for good reason. Internal DOD memoranda obtained and disclosed by the ACLU revealed that Talon had ensnared information on over 2,000 American citizens, some for posing little more of a threat than "the possibility" of "some type of vandalism."

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The top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a summary of the panel's probe into how Duke Cunningham used the panel's staff and resources to forward his corrupt ways.

You can read the summary here.

The probe, ordered last December, found what looks like new dirt on former CIA #3 Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who's been drawn into the Cunningham investigation. But the report concluded that the panel itself was clear of wrongdoing in Cunningham's case.

Indeed, one of Duke's main bribers, Mitchell Wade, even tried to cozy up to staffers, but he kind of weirded them out, according to the five-page executive summary released by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the panel's ranking member.

The report identified three troubling activities, and recommended they be referred to the Justice Department or national security agencies for further investigation:

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The San Diego Union-Tribune published excerpts from a fiery letter it received from Duke Cunningham, the felonious ex-congressman the paper helped put in jail.

But, as clever Reader DH found, the paper secretly published the entire letter, hiding it in a PDF on its site.

You can read the four-page letter here. It's clearly a response to Marcus Stern, the U-T reporter who broke the Duke scandal and now appears to be working on a book about the saga. "You write you book," Cunningham wrote in a barely-legible scrawl, "and remember what forge [sic] got from [Mitchell] Wade [one of Duke's main bribers] they you printed" he continued writing, "as truth will come out and you will find out how liablist [sic] you have & will be," he finished.

Although he wrote early in the letter that he could not discuss his case, Duke dropped some tantalizing tidbits later on.

"Ask yourself why I kicked [Wade] off his own boat twice, told him I was not going to stay on his boat and put it up for sale," Duke wrote. That appears to be a reference to the Duke-Stir, a boat which Wade bought and later gave to Cunningham.

He also appears to disclose classified information. "There is a secret paper in my file that the U.S. Airforce presented to me (both former Chiefs of USAF) to increase the MZM programs and the justification for doing so," Duke wrote.

"It was funded at less than wanted & it will today save lives in the best Aviation Humit [sic] Program in existence now ever deployed with our training forces."

Here's the entire letter. Note: he doesn't say anything about hookers.

The second-in-command to an admitted briber of Duke Cunningham is facing a federal inquiry for possibly improper campaign contributions, according to a new report.

Retired three-star general James King, top deputy to Duke briber Mitchell Wade, is being investigated by the Federal Election Commission for $12,000 in what appear to be "straw" campaign donations to congressional campaigns, U.S. News and World Report says.

The potentially illegal contributions -- all made to lawmakers representing districts of strategic importance to King's company -- were first reported by TPMmuckraker.

King is now chief of Athena Innovative Solutions, renamed from MZM Inc. when Wade pleaded guilty and sold the company. For a time, King worked as a top aide to Michael V. Hayden, then chief of the National Security Agency, on contract from MZM. Hayden is now director of the CIA.

The U.S. News piece is lengthy, and adds even more color to the established portrait of Mitchell Wade as corrupt, megalomaniacal, vengeful and petty. It also has some good details on King, too. For instance, the magazine reports that one of King's favorite aphorisms is, 'There are no lies; the truth keeps changing.'

Today the judge presiding over felonious defense contractor Mitchell Wade's case set a March 12th, 2007 date for their next status conference. That means the leaves will have turned, snow fallen, and the first buds of spring sprung before Mitchell Wade will know his sentencing date. It could be as late as next summer.

Why the delay? It gives him plenty of time to earn his stripes as a cooperator.

Wade's known to have told prosecutors plenty about his alleged fellow briber, Brent Wilkes. He's thought to possibly have dirt on Pentagon officials, also. But remember, Wade oversaw over $150 million in contracts throughout the defense-intelligence world. Who knows what he's giving up?

TPMm reader James Roxbury sent us this video of what appears to be Wade leaving the courthouse today:

Video courtesy of James Roxbury.

I've had a couple days to digest the New York Times' lengthy article on congressional corruption, based largely on an unprecedented on-the-record interview with a man who has been identified as a major briber of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

It isn't the tell-all I'd like it to be. But the things Brent Wilkes didn't want to talk about are nearly as telling as those he discussed freely.

Wilkes, readers will recall, is the guy who is said to have thrown power-broker poker parties in the Watergate Hotel and elsewhere, some of which were said to feature congressmen and prostititutes. He was the man who's said to have trained Mitchell Wade in the art of the dirty deal -- Wade, of course, is the other identified Duke briber, and has been cooperating with prosecutors for months.

The piece, already notable for its revelations, becomes moreso when one notices it contains barely a passing mention of Cunningham, Wade, or the phantom prostitutes (none have yet been publicly identified).

Instead, Wilkes focuses the paper's attention on Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), now the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and Bill Lowery, the lawmaker-turned-lobbyist who, as a "gatekeeper" to Lewis and his earmark factory, supposedly kept the federal dollars flowing to a dozen Wilkes-run firms.

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It's official: the Virginia defense facility run -- on taxpayer dollars -- by one of the central felons in the Duke Cunningham scandal is closing Monday.

The news comes just days after the Pentagon announced it would not renew the contract for the Martinsville-based Foreign Supplier Assessment Center, which was created and sustained largely through earmarks from Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA). Goode received over $90,000 in contributions from Mitchell Wade, who's spilling his guts to federal investigators in an attempt to dodge jail time.

Who's it bad news for? Just about everyone involved. Goode's getting slammed for bringing MZM to town, winning the company unusually generous financial perks and sending the bill to the city. "Rep. Goode forgot whom he should represent when he brokered a deal favorable to campaign contributors at the risk of his district," the Roanoke (Va.) Times opined Saturday.

It's bad news for MZM -- now Athena Innovative Solutions. Sources tell me this is not the only one of their contracts getting cut. The Pentagon trimmed more than 30 positions from an Athena contract to provide employees to the Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA), according to two former MZM employees who are in touch with current Athena staffers.

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It looks like one of MZM's Pentagon boondoggles will shut down soon, the Roanoke Times reports today. It's good to hear the DoD is pulling back from its MZM contracts, but it looks like bad news for the folks in the rural town that's home to the operation.

The program -- the Virginia-based Foreign Supplier Assessment Center -- was created in 2003 by an earmark tucked into a classified appropriations bill by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), to be operated by MZM. He kept it alive with another earmark in 2005.

Before inserting the first earmark, Goode accepted many thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from MZM. Before the second earmark, he enjoyed the same largesse. In all, Goode took about $90,000 in campaign contributions from MZM president Mitchell Wade and other employees. Goode has since given the money to charity; Wade has pleaded guilty to bribing convicted congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham, of course, has gone to jail.

But here's the curious, and sad, thing: Goode didn't just fleece a few million bucks from U.S. taxpayers to give the military a facility they didn't want. He also screwed his own constituents -- the less-than-prosperous residents of Martinsville, Virginia.

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AP reports:

WASHINGTON — An ex-employee at a defense contractor pleaded guilty Friday to making illegal donations to the campaign of Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., marking the latest chapter in a congressional bribery probe.

Richard Berglund, who formerly supervised the Martinsville, Va., office of MZM Inc., faces up to a year in prison for engaging in a scheme with company owner Mitchell Wade to reimburse MZM employees for campaign donations. The scheme violates the Federal Election Campaign Act.

In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, in exchange for help in getting $150 million in Defense Department contracts.

What's up with the federal investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)? I chatted with Jerry Kammer, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Copley News Service, whose work scrutinized Lewis' dealings even before the probe was publicly known. He counseled patience and a long view. These things, he says, take time:

"I think when the investigators started on this stuff, they had to climb the learning curve, just like we've had to. When I wrote for The Arizona Republic, I got to know some of the people who worked on the Charles Keating task force -- he was the symbolic central figure of the S&L scandal. It took them a while to get started, but once they got a head of steam they made a lot of progress.

"I'd never looked at a lobbying disclosure form or an appropriations conference report until last summer. I'd been writing about immigration. . . I would bet that the agents they brought in on this case had a similar learning process to undergo. They'd probably never pulled any of these documents before.

"As a matter of fact, I've wondered how they train the agents for a case like this. These are complicated investigations. They have to be able to take something to a jury against a very well-paid defense lawyer. I wouldn't be surprised to see the investigation take six months or a year until we see any concrete results. And, of course, they might decide that they don't have a case.

"[Reporters] can write about behavior that we think is questionable. That's our standard. But [federal prosecutors] have to decide if that behavior violates a criminal statute. And in Washington, there are a lot of people who will tell you that the systemic scandal lies in what Congress allows to be legal.

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Buried in this new Business Week article by Eamon Javers and Dawn Kopecki is a startling revelation: MZM Inc., the company once owned by admitted felon Mitchell Wade, worked on assessing Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities during the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"[B]efore the invasion of Iraq," the duo writes, "[MZM's business] included helping with [the] controversial analysis of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities."

Wade, of course, has confessed to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) with over a million dollars in money, gifts and favors.

Others, including Warandpiece.com's Laura Rozen, have long suspected Wade's MZM to have played a role in throwing the calls on Saddam's nuclear programs. It's been known for some time that MZM provided contract employees to the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), which handled much of the Pentagon's pre-war WMD analysis. But Javers and Kopecki are the first to report that those MZMers were involved in the center's (mis)interpretation of the pre-war Iraq nuke intel.

The two note that while the White House's WMD Commission directed heavy criticism at the NGIC for "misscharacterizing" Saddam's nuclear program, it didn't fault MZM directly. (Of course, as we reported earlier, MZM had at least three staffers on the commission's staff.)

While the White House's own panel didn't fault MZM, an earlier Senate study had found that an unnamed contractor was directly involved in blowing the nuke call. See Rozen's post from last December for details.

There's a kicker to all this, of course. Despite having a hand in one of the biggest intelligence failures in recent history, folks in the intel community seem to think MZM has just done great work for them. Before the company was bought last August, the new owner, Veritas, hired former CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith to do due diligence on MZM, and according to his interviews, MZM did top-shelf work. "Smith. . . reported back that the half-dozen intelligence agencies he approached thought highly of MZM."

It's a piece well worth reading.

Update: Rozen has more details about NGIC and WMD intelligence.

Vanity Fair's lengthy takeout on the Duke Cunningham scandal reminded me of why I find it so engrossing: the details.

And what colorful details the magazine serves up: There's Duke on the phone, just days before pleading guilty, desperately cajoling his antiques dealer to hide some of his furniture so the feds won't find it. And there's former top CIA official Dusty Foggo, flashing his agency credentials to the strip club bouncer, before taking a seat in front of the stage and talking about his sexual preferences all night.

And there's admitted Duke briber Mitchell Wade, strolling through his office. "Where's your Rolls-Royce?" an aide asks him Oh, Wade answers breezily, Cunningham's got it today, it's parked in the congressional parking lot.

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Vanity Fair weighs in on the slow-emerging D.C. saga: Duke Cunningham was a bad father, Brent Wilkes got congressmen laid in Honduras, Dusty Foggo is a dirty, dirty man, and Mitchell Wade is an evil genius.

Is former top intelligence official James King under pressure from federal prosecutors?

If not, it looks like he should be. As we reported several weeks ago, King -- the former head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency -- twice aided the bribery schemes of Mitchell Wade, making $12,000 in illegal campaign donations to help Wade buy favors from lawmakers.

At the time, King was a top executive at Wade's defense contracting firm, MZM. He took over the company, which is now named Athena Innovative Solutions, after Wade's felonies became public.

King could be a dangerous fellow to go down -- for many folks. He was a trusted aide to Michael V. Hayden, former NSA chief and now head of the CIA, who employed him as a contractor from MZM. While at MZM, King also played a key role in developing the Pentagon's troubled domestic spying operation, CIFA. And as a senior MZM executive, he was likely a witness to many of Wade's hijinks.

As the Washington Post reported Friday, Feds have convinced another MZM executive, Richard Berglund, to plead guilty to making the same kind of fraudulent donations. (Check out our guest-blogging TPM Reader DK's thoughts on this.)

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The Center for Public Integrity yesterday released a huge (and hugely disturbing) report on corporate-funded travel for federal lawmakers and staff.

Who was at the top of the list of corporate junket-givers? General Atomics, a name which should be familiar to our readers. As we have reported, it's enjoyed close ties to several figures under investigation by the FBI. The company spent over $660,000 on trips for 86 Capitol Hill staffers and lawmakers from 2000 to 2005.

TPMmuckraker fans already know two of those staffers: Letitia White, a former trusted aide to House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) (now under investigation); and Nancy Lifset, a General Atomics frequent-flyer who held a day job in the offices of now-imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA). (In addition to flying the staffers around, GA also gave generously to both lawmakers' campaigns, and helped raise money for them.)

According to CPI's data, Lifset took more trips on General Atomics' dime than any other staffer, Medill News Service reports.

In addition to dropping big bucks to fly staffers around the world, General Atomics paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a lobby shop now under federal investigation: Copeland Lowery. As we reported, the firm employs Letitia White, and it has extraordinarily close ties to her former boss Lewis. Oh - White herself is also being investigated by the FBI, the New York Times reported last weekend.

If Lewis is under investigation, and Copeland Lowery is under investigation, and Letitia White is under investigation, does it follow that General Atomics -- which pumped so much money into Congress with this trio's help, in order to pump many millions back out -- is also a target of the probe? When we called the company, an aide to its spokesperson said the company had no comment.

Anybody remember the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center? That's the operation MZM spent so much time and money trying to win a contract to run. Mitchell Wade bundled thousands of dollars in illegal contributions to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure MZM got the deal. (Wade is also the top briber of Duke Cunningham.)

Until recently, a fellow named Joe James was MZM's number-two in charge of the center, the Martinsville (Va.) Daily reports. He recently stepped down "voluntarily."

Now, the paper tells us that James' wife -- FEC records identify her as May James -- worked at the Pentagon office which oversaw MZM's contract. (MZM has since been renamed Athena Innovative Solutions.)

Last year, May James joined the staff of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, which has authority over the FSAC, her husband's outfit, the paper reports.

If you recall, MZM/Athena has a pattern of hiring relatives of Defense officials, apparently as a strategy to win -- or keep -- contracts. The company signed on the son of National Ground Intelligence Center manager Robert Fromm; months later they picked up an NGIC contract. (They eventually hired Fromm himself.)

MZM also hired William Rich III, the son of NGIC Chief William Rich, two months after receiving their first NGIC contract. As well, MZM employed the wife of Rich's longtime chief of staff, Robert Canar, as a secretary.

There's a race on in the District of Columbia's U.S. Attorney's Office - who's the more dangerous cooperator: Jack Abramoff or Mitchell Wade?

Abramoff, you've heard plenty about. But it's time to start giving Mitch Wade his due. He brought down Duke Cunningham, supplying prosecutors with most of the information in Duke's plea agreement. And we have Wade to thank for hookergate, since he was the one who told investigators that Brent Wilkes was supplying Duke and possibly others with prostitutes. It's likely that Wade, continuing to dish on his old pal Brent Wilkes, was also behind the recent widening of the Cunningham investigation to other members of the Appropriations Committee.

Well, it looks like there's a lot more where that came from. In a recent filing, prosecutors and Wade's attorney have asked to postpone the preparation for Wade's sentencing - he pled guilty back in February - because his cooperation is ongoing. In fact, it's likely to "continue for quite some time," according to prosecutors. As a result, they don't even want to set a sentencing date when they meet with the judge as scheduled on August 21. If they get their wish, it's unlikely that Wade will be sentenced until next year. And that gives him plenty of time to do all he can to lighten his sentence.

I think the smart money is on Mitchell Wade.

I wrote yesterday about how former MZM executive James C. King, a onetime aide to former NSA chief Michael Hayden, participated in two campaign "straw donor" scams on behalf of his company, according to government records. Basically, he wrote checks to candidates at the direction of MZM head Mitchell Wade, and Wade immediately reimbursed him in cash.

I wondered, if King was considered a lawbreaker, why had he apparently escaped punishment? I called oft-quoted political finance expert Brett Kappel, or Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, and put it to him.

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I wrote yesterday about how former NSA Director Michael Hayden's aide, a top MZM executive, participated in an illegal campaign donation scam run by the head of his company, Mitchell Wade. (Wade, of course, has confessed to bribing Duke Cunningham, and is cooperating with prosecutors.)

I was wrong, as my colleague Paul gently noted to me. The executive -- James C. King, on contract to the NSA from MZM -- appears to have participated in two illegal campaign donation scams.

In addition to faking $8,000 in personal contributions to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) on his company's behalf, government records indicate King faked several thousand dollars in donations to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), also.

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I wrote earlier that the MZM employee who worked for Michael Hayden at the NSA "has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities."

That's not entirely accurate.

Around the same time King is said to have worked for the White House's new pick to be CIA chief, he was helping former MZM chief Mitchell Wade disguise thousands of dollars in illegal "straw contributions" to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), a review of government documents appears to show.

Along with Wade's infamous $2800 dinner with Harris, those contributions appear to have been part of an effort to convince the lawmaker to push for an MZM-run Defense facility in her district. (Harris tried, but missed the deadline.)

The 'straw contribution' scam is a simple (and illegal) end run around campaign funding rules, which limit donations from individuals. Rather than cutting one huge check from yourself to your lawmaker of choice, you get a bunch of people to write smaller checks to the lawmaker, reimburse those folks for their "contributions," and then personally hand the bundle of checks to your candidate.

In early 2004, records show King helped Wade run this scam by writing four $2000 checks from himself and his wife to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), in exchange for an immediate cash reimbursement.

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While director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden contracted the services of a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, according to two former employees of the company.

Hayden, President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA, contracted with MZM Inc. for the services of Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of the company, the sources say. MZM was owned and operated by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with $1.4 million in money and gifts. Wade has also reportedly told investigators he helped arrange for prostitutes to entertain the disgraced lawmaker, and he continues to cooperate with a federal inquiry into the matter.

King has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities. However, federal records show he contributed to some of Wade's favored lawmakers, including $6000 to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and $4000 to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).

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Poor Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL). She's got enemies all around her -- her former staffers, former advisers to her Senate campaign, even her own Republican party.

Now, they seem to be conspiring to bring her down with leaks. In a way, it's almost noble that the party will smear its friends as easily as it would smear an opponent. In Harris' case they're even gentlemanly about it -- her former campaign strategist Ed Rollins has now gone on the record twice to share derogatory information about her.

This time, he backs up two former staffers who tell the Orlando Sentinel she made an earmark for Mitchell Wade's MZM, Inc. "a priority," overruling their objections to it. Before Wade found himself singing like a canary to federal investigators, he was busy helping to procure hookers, spreading cash around Capitol Hill, and taking Harris to a $2,800 dinner, all apparent efforts to win fat government contracts. Rollins told Harris he thought her dealings looked bad -- and now he's telling you:

"I said, 'Duke Cunningham got cash from Wade, and in your case he's promising to raise money,'" said Rollins. . . "I told her, 'This is how it's going to look.'"

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