Scandal notes

Why did Goss resign? The latest from Ken Silverstein:

...one of Goss's top aides traveled to Iraq just days before his boss was let go and had absolutely no idea of what was coming down the pike. "The turf-battle line is purely a cover story," said a former CIA official I spoke with. "The reason they had to act now was because they were scared about what's going to come out about [the Cunningham scandal]."

Brant "Nine Fingers" Bassett, the Goss aide on the Hill, seems to play a large role in all this. We learn that he was receiving payment from Wilkes' ADCS while working on Capitol Hill with then-congressman Porter Goss, who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Justin Rood asks the right question:

What was the money for? Even Brant didn't seem completely sure. First he called it an "honorarium," then he crossed that out on the disclosure form and wrote "consulting fee."

I will suggest a possible answer. If you read fairly widely in the literature of intelligence, you'll see that retired CIA men often brag about the fact that the Agency keeps congressional overseers compromised and controlled. Who watches the watchmen? The watchmen themselves.

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Consider: The intelligence committee was run by Porter Goss, an old CIA hand doing a stint in congress. Even as a legislator, he made no secret of his desire to head the Agency. One does not exit a company while announcing a desire to become the CEO; obviously, Goss never really left the intelligence community. Neither had the chief staffer at the HPSCI, the late John Millis -- another "former" CIA guy who mysteriously interrupted his career path in order to work on the Hill -- always expecting to go back, one day, to the Company.

Now we have Brant of the Missing Digit -- yet another "former" CIA guy who went up the Hill to work the HPSCI circuit. He probably took a pay cut to do so. To make the congressional aide gig worth his while, his salary had to be topped off.

Enter Wilkes, a "businessman" with a long CIA background. Time now says that he paid "Nine Fingers" for advice given to Wilkes concerning a business trip. Believe that if you will.

In my view, the Wilkes affair is not a bribery scandal. This is an intelligence scandal. It is -- in part -- the story of how Capitol Hill became Spook Hill. The real question thus becomes: Which operations were kept under wraps by the Goss gang?

Question: Are we getting these details now because the neocons want to wreck the Agency?

How far will it go? According to the San Diego North County Times, Randy "Duke" Cunningham refuses to cooprate with investigators going after the bigger fish. Why would a man in prison, a man in his 60s, make things worse for himself and toss away any chance of a reduced sentence?

Only two possibilities come to my mind: Death threats, or the promise of a presidential pardon.

The newspaper quotes Rick Gwin of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service as saying: "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."