The true cost of Hookergate

I've been lax in covering recent developments in the Wilkes-Cunningham scandal, an ongoing story that once received a great deal of attention on this blog.

Daniel Hopsicker has published an excellent piece pointing out a simple fact missed by all other commentators: "Hookergate" -- unlike previous sex scandals, such as those involving Monica Lewinski or Donna Rice -- cost lives. Tons of DOD cash went to Wilkes and Wade, while our solders went begging:

Just one month after the Duke-ster was getting his rocks off in Hawaii, a story in the Los Angeles Times contained this headline: “Why must Americans in Iraq face death because of outmoded body armor?”

From a New York Times article cited by Hopsicker:

“The Pentagon has been collecting the data on wounds since the beginning of the war in March 2003 in part to determine the effectiveness of body armor.

"The military's medical examiner, Dr. Craig T. Mallak, told a military panel in 2003 that the information 'screams to be published.'"

“The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army troops, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.”

Hopsicker then brings it all back home:

What makes all this tragic almost beyond words is this statement from the story in the N.Y. Times: Even at retail prices, it would have cost less than $97 million to outfit each of the 150,000 soldiers in Iraq with state-of-the-art vest plates.

Hell, the Defense Department's 'black budget' spent more money than that with Wilkes’ company just to Xerox old maps.

Meanwhile, speculation continues to grow that the rash of fired U.S. Attorneys may have been engineered to provide cover for the one firing that really, really counts -- Carol Lam, the woman who went after Wilkes, Dusty Foggo, and John T. Michael (an under-discussed Cunningham bribe figure).

Interestingly, Lam will soon function as an attorney for Qualcomm, the wireless technology firm. That news may intrigue conspiracy buffs of a certain sort. As this blog noted a long time ago, Qualcomm came up in a mini-scandal involving one Jack Shaw, the Pentagon's Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security. I never did figure out if Shaw was the good guy or the bad guy in that business; you'll have to read the earlier stories to come to your own conclusions. I will note here simply that Qualcomm has strong ties to Israel (a factoid which may set off your paranoia buzzers, though not necessarily mine), and counts among its board members Brent Scowcroft.

One possible explanation: The company hired Lam, in part, to keep an eye on her. She must know some very sensitive material.