Wilkes and the CIA: Some history

We begin in the realm of rumor: A voice on the telephone has told me that Brent Wilkes, the man who bribed Congressman Cunningham, may now be looking for property in Belize. Is that true? I cannot say -- but who would be surprised? (Apparently, I wasn't the only one to hear that voice.)

Poor Gina! She no doubt had planned such a lovely Christmas party this year...

Today's topic is the relationship between Wilkes and the CIA. Perversely, I'll begin with an historical anecdote that has nothing to do with Wilkes -- at least, not so far as I know -- but which does shed a certain light on his world and how it operates. I'll try to make the narrative as entertaining as possible.

The Legitimate Businessmen's Club. You will read the fullest account of this tale in Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror (a book I've recommended perhaps too many times), although you can find the gist of it here and here.

Once, in a faraway land called the 1980s, Saddam Hussein and "Poppy" Bush were -- believe it or not! -- the bestest of buds. At that time, some CIA-linked Legitimate Businessmen went over to Iraq to sell military items. Technically, these businessmen were not of the CIA (in the sense of being on the official payroll), yet they maintained close connections to the Agency and to the military. As I've said many times, you can't understand modern history unless you know about these "spooky" informal networks, in which the players receive both start-up capital and connections from covert sources.

One of these Agency-linked arms merchandisers was Sarkis Soghanalian (who had befriended Trento, which is how Trento came to know about this stuff). Business proceeded smoothly; Saddam received cluster bombs, battle choppers, guns, and and even lovelier bits of merchandise.

Somewhere along the way, a mafia-like group of Republican operatives -- which included Richard Nixon and his old "pals" -- muscled onto the scene. In short and in sum, they demanded a hefty cut of Operation Arm Saddam.

This second wave of Legitimate Businessmen made a deal with Saddam to supply the Iraqi military with uniforms. I've seen varying estimates as to how much money this scheme was worth; the high figure is $450 million. The group promised high-quality uniforms manufactured by "their" plant in Tennessee. Actually, the job was off-shored to a Romanian firm known for producing clothing on the ultra-cheap. This decision insured that, instead of making big profits, the Republican mobsters could make big, big, BIG profits.

Saddam's people were not happy when they opened up the boxes and discovered wool uniforms. In a desert country, in the summer, wool is rarely the soldier's first choice.

You would think that Saddam Hussein would refuse ever again to deal with this group. In fact, they became more powerful than ever: They drove out Soghnalian and pretty much took over the weapons trade in Iraq. They did not actually produce the needed goods and services; job orders were farmed out to the low-ball bidders.

These men practiced the most perverse form of capitalism. The greatest rewards went to thugs who did not actually make anything -- who had, in fact, wedged themselves between the consumer and the producers, neither of whom wanted or needed the services of middlemen. Saddam had no choice but to go along with an operation that had acquired the blessings of Republican bigwigs.

Where did the money go? Did the loot merely line pockets -- or was it put to partisan use?

More history. (Bear with me: This part will eventually link up with Wilkes and company.) Ronald Reagan wanted to change governments in Nicaragua, but Congress wouldn't let him arm the contra rebels directly. Private fund-raising efforts took over.

General John K. Singlaub hit up the usual right-wing gazillionaires in the United States. The Sultan of Brunei -- the world's richest man -- made a heavy donation to a cause he cannot have cared about. The Saudis kicked in some $32 million. In a deal brokered by "Scooter" Libby and Oliver North, China provided the contras with tons of equipment, including surface-to-air missiles.

Then things got really weird.

The press started talking about "spooky" drug flights involving such characters as Barry Seal. The notorious Medellin cocaine cartel funded the ARDE contra faction, while the rival Cali cartel funded the FDN contras. Eden Pastora's contra group received funding from a Costa Rican/Panamanian cocaine network. Bush favored the FDN, which is why the American press at that time focused on Medellin and rarely mentioned Cali.

Reagan deregulated the Savings and Loan industry, opening the way for a horde of sharpsters who looted America to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars. As Steve Pizzo and Pete Brewton discovered, many of those "business crooks" -- Stefan Halper, Robert Corson and Herman K. Beebe being perhaps the most interesting examples -- had military and intelligence connections. We were told that no small amount of the looted money went to the contras.

Toward the end of the 1980s, the press offered some strange reports out of the Philippines: Singlaub was in that country searching for the semi-legendary caches of gold and other valuables that the Japanese had buried on the island during WWII. At the time, a few articles suggested that Singlaub was really trying to steer some of Marcos' ill-gotten loot toward the contras. Other sources say that the Japanese treasure had indeed been dug up piecemeal over the decades, and that this unimaginable bounty was used, in part, to finance the anti-Sandinista effort.

Millions from the notorious BCCI bank were diverted "to the contras." Israel contributed a steady flow of arms to the contras. The scandal over the stolen PROMIS software was, in some early reports, tied to contra arming and financing. Money siphoned from military sales to Saddam Hussein (mentioned above) had contra links.

And of course, Reagan's illegal arms sales to Iran resulted in hefty profits being diverted to the contras. That's why they called it the Iran-Contra affair.

I've summarized with an almost criminal brevity a lot of sordid history, and I've done so to emphasize one point: Every time a new scandal popped up during the 1980s and early 1990s, the same refrain appeared: "It's all about funding the contras!" Money from arms sales, cocaine, heroin, gold, S&Ls, crooked banks, gambling, software, bribery, Middle East financiers, "patriotic" donations -- it all went toward regime change in the small country of Nicaragua.

Supposedly.

Eventually, a few people started asking the obvious question: How much money did the contras need? Were they firing gold bullets down there?

In fact, fighters within the contra movement always insisted that they were seriously underfunded. Do not dismiss this assessment. The Sandinista army was hardly one of the world's most impressive fighting machines, yet the contras never seemed to make much headway against them. The FDN won only when the Nicaraguan electorate finally -- literally -- cried "uncle."

But if others grabbed much of this "contra" money -- where did it go? Were pockets lined, or was the clandestine cash used for partisan purposes?

Brent and Dusty. At least 35 years ago, Brent Wilkes' formed a close friendship with Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. They traveled the same respectable-though-not-exemplary academic path together: High School, Southwestern Community College, San Diego State University. Wilkes, some say, was a violent hot-head who brutalized anyone who looked weaker. One source told me that, even in those days, Wilkes and Foggo were obsessed with attaining power -- a goal few young people dared to express at a time when the scent of 60s pacifism still perfumed the air.

Dusty Foggo became first a cop, then a D.A.'s assistant -- and then was recruited into CIA, where he now holds the third-highest position. Some say that he was always more of a desk jockey than a James Bond, but he did do a stint in Honduras during the contra war. He handled their financing.

And now you know why I spent so much time describing all that money that went to the contras -- and perhaps elsewhere.

As for Wilkes: In college, he had studied accounting, which some might consider an odd choice for a bully with dreams of conquest. Like Foggo, he often bragged about his Agency connections. The world doth not love a wide-mouthed spook, or so I've been told -- yet braggadocio seems not to have harmed the career of these two gentlemen. Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those "outside" businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:

Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen -- including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization – to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.

This passage is somewhat misleading in its implication that Wilkes created the World Finance Corporation, which actually had its origin point while Wilkes was still in school. This was no ordinary financial firm; it was once quite notorious. Before there was BCCI, there was the World Finance Corporation -- a CIA-linked money laundromat that probably had recruited Wilkes earlier than the SDUT story indicates.

Perhaps the fullest history of WFC's origins can be found in Hank Messick's 1979 expose of the drug trade, "Of Grass and Snow." The financial institution originated with an anti-Castro Cuban named Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, who had been a banker before the revolution. Hernandez-Cartaya joined the CIA's efforts to unseat the dictator, playing a role in the Bay of Pigs. He began the WFC in Coral Gables, Florida in 1971; in the words of Hank Messick, "one did not have to be an international banker to recognize that Hernandez-Cartaya had some very wealthy and powerful backers." According to one account, start-up capital was funneled by way of another CIA associate and Bay of Pigs veteran, Salvador Aldereguia-Ors.

Although it began with just five employees and $500,000 capitalization, the bank was somehow able, just a year later, to loan Panama $10 million. By 1976, WFC had branches in numerous cities and was doing half-a-billion dollars worth of business internationally.

If, as I suspect, Wilkes joined forces with WFC in the mid-1970s, he may have played a role in the creation of a spin-off called the Dominican Mortgage Corporation, which shared the same address as WFC's Coral Gables HQ. This group heavily invested in Vegas -- casinos, real estate development, even a detective agency.

WFC and DMC were the institutions of choice for narco-traffickers. From Messick's book:

Names and dates were given, and the amount of cocaine entering Las Vegas alone was placed at 340 pounds annually. Internal Revenue Service agents told of receiving word of a million in case being carried by courier from Las Vegas to Miami. They tailed the courier to WFC offices in Coral Gables. He entered the building with two suitcases; he came out empty-handed. In Brownsville, the shrimp fleet was reported to be bringing in narcotics in vessels owned by WFC.

The building manager at Coral Gables was a CIA explosives expert. A member of the Santos Trafficante "family" directed one of the branch banks.

In short, the bank was both mobbed up and spooked up. David Yallop and Penny Lernoux report that, around this time, WFC formed alliances with Italy's fascist P2 lodge, which had gained control of the Vatican's finances. As readers know, P2 "graduates" such as Michael Ledeen have played a key role in engineering the current war.

In 1976, the WFC's directors over-reached: They financed an anti-Castro terror group called CORU, headed by CIA "contact" man Orlando Bosch. They targeted not only Castro but any person or institution they considered overly sympathetic to him. That year, CORU conducted no less than 50 bombings in New York, Panama, Miami, Venezuela and other locations; they also appear to have had a hand in the assassination of Orlando Letelier.

In October, they bombed a Cuban passenger jet. "All of Castro's planes are warplanes," an unrepentant Bosch later explained.

Bosch was eventually arrested and held in prison, until he was pardoned by the first President Bush, who had been CIA Director when Bosch went on his terror rampage. Even though Bosch had received his funding from a CIA-affiliated bank, DCI Bush had done nothing to rein him in.

From Peter Dale Scott's Cocaine Politics:

Another CORU crime was the botched kidnapping of the Cuban consul (and the murder of his chauffeur) in Merida, Mexico, on July 23, 1976, only a month after the group's founding. WFC's drug money financed this operation, and WFC's founder, Hernandez Cartaya, may even have helped plan it.

When Bush gave way to Stansfield Turner, the Agency realized that their Cuban contingent had grown arrogant and beyond control. Local Florida cops and the FBI continued to scrutinize the WFC's interactions with drug traffickers. Embarrassing news stories started to appear. The heat, as they say, was on.

The Agency stymied the FBI's work. So did the IRS, which argued that the WFC was best left alone -- after all, they kept all those narco-dollars in the country.

WFC stayed in business -- yet, obviously, something had to be done about the Cubans who ran the place.

In 1978, Hernandez-Cartaya was arrested on a charge of using a fake passport -- a misfortune which tends to befall spooks who fall out of official favor. His partner, Salvador Aldereguia-Ors, was found in the possession of "evidence" (almost certainly bogus) linking him to Castro's intelligence services. When his cousin mysteriously died after putting up bail money, Aldereguia-Ors pulled a vanishing act. Hernandez-Cartaya eventually got out of jail and involved himself with S&L skullduggery.

To put the matter crudely: The CIA put honkies in control of the operation. Among them, it seems, were Brent Wilkes, who (as per the San Diego Union Tribune) opened the WFC office in DC, and Dusty Foggo, who funded and oversaw the anti-Castro Cubans operating in the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan conflicts.

The beast was bridled, but resentments lingered. I believe that the conflict between the CORU cadre and the Turner-ized CIA provides one origin point for the current split between the neocons and the Agency.

(An interesting side-note: WFC had formed a partnership in an Arab bank with Sheikh Naomi, ruler of the small emirate of Ajman. After the 1978 shake-up, the Sheik transfered his affections -- so to speak -- to BCCI.)

WFC still operates in a number of cities; contact information for the Augusta branch is here. Feel free to ring them up and ask if they still launder drug money or do favors for the CIA.

Their specialty now is providing loans to people with poor credit histories. They also -- oddly enough -- sell furniture.

This is noteworthy. Readers will recall that MZM -- run by Wilkes' friend and former employee Mitchell Wade, another man with a CIA background -- reportedly supplied furniture to the West Wing of the White House, an odd task for a firm devoted to intelligence and defense. (According to this story, MZM provided furniture and computers to Cheney's offices.) I have speculated, in the past, that this "furniture" was bugged.

I have no idea how WFC and Wilkes came to part ways. His next employer, according the the SDUT, was "Aimco Financial Management of La Jolla."

His chief duty was to bring in politicians, including Lowery, to talk to Aimco clients about how new laws might affect their finances.

Aimco ran into trouble after securities regulators accused its founder, Marvin I. Friedman, of taking $268,000 of a client's funds in 1991.

Aimco Financial Management of La Jolla has disappeared. It did exist at one time, and Friedman did make contributions to Lowery (presumably at Wilkes' urging). More recently, Friedman was caught out in a much larger scandal involving an entity called Global Money Management, which has been described as a Ponzi scheme in which many an investor was defrauded.

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to determine is whether the Wilkes/Friedman AIMCO was a subsidiary of this company which owns a massive number of this country's apartments. This AIMCO has had connections (via Director Norman Brownstein) to the CIA and the Bush family.

ADCS, the company Wilkes headquartered in Poway, was founded on software designed by a German firm called VPMax. I think we should see VPMax's role in this as analogous to that of the Romanian concern which provided those wool uniforms to Saddam Hussein. As I suggested earlier, Wilkes empire is largely a collection of false fronts built on a small foundation of "real" products, usually taken from other, smaller players.

And from there, we enter the current scandal. About which, more to come soon.

Until then, consider: Wilkes' firms received millions of taxpayer dollars; Daniel Hopsicker puts the amount at $700 million, although mainstream journalists speak of a much lower figure. Regardless of the amount, sources agree that the Defense Department did not really like or need his document conversion services. And Wilkes' list of companies included obvious fakes.

So once again, the question confronts us: Where did the money go?

This time, we have a pretty clear answer -- in the form of the many political contributions (and outright bribes) made by Wilkes' many subsidiaries.

Shi'ite and Sunni

My piece on Wilkes and the CIA will appear in a couple of hours -- I've put it off so long that some of my "new" details have already peppered other people's work, alas. But right now, I want to comment on the Daily Kos diarist who presents evidence that as late as 2003, George Bush did not know that a difference exists between the Shi'ite and Sunni versions of Islam.

This isn't the first time the claim has been made. My question is -- how the hell could even a "favorite son" like Bush make it into Yale without acquiring so basic a piece of information?

Back in (say) 1969, many Americans would not have known of the distinction. But that situation changed after the oil shocks, the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis forced our media to pay attention to Islamic affairs. Younger people may not recall the coverage of those events. But trust me -- between the years 1976-1980, if you opened up any kind of a newspaper or flipped through the major news magazines, you would have encountered article after article after article which explained that the Ayatollah Khomenei was a Shi'ite, and that being a Sh'ite differed from being a Sunni.

This was no obscure factoid. 60 Minutes talked about it. Radio news reports talked about it. Preachers talked about it. Back then, everybody in America -- housewives, cab drivers, loudmouths on barstools, people who spent the better part of each day stoned out of their brains -- they all got it.

"In Christianity, you got yer Cat-licks and yer Protestants. In Islam, you got yer Sh'ites and yer Sunnis." Perfectly understandable, even to the dullest of the dullards. A popular redneck t-shirt of the time read "Khomenei is a Shi'ite-head."

How could George W. Bush not know?

Another question: Are the red staters of today just as ignorant as their leader (until recently) was? In other words, are today's stupid people even stupider than were the stupid people of twenty-five yeas ago?

Head's up

I should have a major new piece on Wilkes and CIA up soon.

Vote fraud: Good News, bad news

First, the good news: Brad Friedman has finally shown us what he's been working on these past few days. Seems that Diebold, the unfavorite company of every democracy lover, will soon be on the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit involving securities fraud. I very much want to know what this is all about...

Now the bad news: Democracy in Ohio has long been on life support. They're about to pull the plug.

When you read this piece, you'll be asking: What the hell are we gonna do? What CAN we do?

I've been saying it for quite a few months: Rebel. To do so, you need not pick up a gun. Just keep your money from the government.

No democracy, no taxes. Remember: Blue states are producer states, in that they give more to the federal government than they receive in goods and services. Red states -- I'm looking at you, Texas -- are leech states. They live off the taxes we Dems produce. Until the thugs return this nation to older and more trustworthy election systems, no more moolah. No more moochie-moochie for our democracy-hatin' hillbilly cousins.

Here's another suggestion: We need armies of international observers, followed by international pressure. Of course, implementing this tactic has problems, not least among them being money.

Another major problem: International election monitors just cannot get their heads around the fact that the United States does not have a single federal standard. The lack of such a standard is all they ever talk about. Their attitude sems to be: "Well, the obvious problem is the fact that you have fifty different election systems. First change that situation, and then we'll get back to you for some follow-up work." We need to explain to the international community that, yes, there are fifty different standards, and that this unfortunate situation will never, never, never change -- just as the cat will never, never, never wear a bell just to please the mice.

A few general comments -- plus: Has the BULGE returned?

Well, I may finally have achieved a day with a light work load. Time to catch up on some basic human activities -- catching a little shut-eye, walking the dog, drinking Jamba Juice, and trying to end Republican party corruption.

Many who tried to access this site within the past couple of days weren't able to do so. Some have speculated that "they" put the kibosh on my work. Very doubtful -- the outage seems also to have affected other blogs using the Blogger service. (Update: Just a minute ago, Xymphora was up, while my URL led to a "403 error." Even so, let's not get paranoid.)

Besides, right now a whole lot of people (including some well-known writers) are looking into Wilkes, and into the larger isssue of DOD contractor corruption. That's the best possible outcome. Remember Return of the King? Welcome to the battle of Pelennor Fields. We're facing the fearsome mega-elephants of war, and if we want to bring one of those monsters down, we'll need a thousand stubborn little SOBs to ride out there, get within range and fire their best shots.

One happy warrior who has taken aim at the beast is Laura Rozen. Check out her latest:

Heard a funny story about Brent Wilkes today, alleged Cunningham co-conspirator 1. That he has a whole lot of water bottles in his office. When someone remarked on them, Wilkes said he was going to be selling that water to the government. Hey, who said Pure Aqua Technologies was a shell company?

And don't let anyone try to taint you with the dread words "conspiracy theory." A down-to-earth story about defense contractor fraud does not deserved to be lumped alongside eldritch allegations about aliens, psychics, freemasons and similar Illuminati weirdness.

The proposition that taxpayer monies were funneled into political campaigns is hardly outside the realm of the thinkable, especially in light of the Wilkes and Wade CIA connections. For decades, the CIA has used similar methods to engineer elections in other countries -- in Italy, in France, in Lebanon, in Japan. The old Covert Action Information Bulletin once printed a story (sorry, I don't have the publication date to hand) which claimed that some Agency hands used these very same "covert funding" tactics to help unseat Frank Church, the congressman who had caused the Company some annoyance in the 1970s.

I'll have more on the scandal soon. In the meantime, a reader has passed along a tidbit about...THE BULGE.

Remember Promptergate? It may be back. My reader insists that if you examine a CNN clip available here, you'll encounter clear indications that some offscreen helper is whispering into Bush's ear. (Scroll down to the words "Watch the president blast back -- 2:12")

Alas, I cannot judge for myself. The video clip won't load for me. (And yes, I do have the latest version of Windows Media Player, a piece of software I never particularly liked.) So hie thee hence, and tell me what you see....

Reagan's out to get Dean

It's not every day that the son of a president calls for the death of a major figure like Howard Dean. Yesterday, radio personality Michael Reagan said "Dean should be hung" for advocating an Iraq pullout.

I think Reagan meant to say "Dean should be hanged." The original phrasing implies that Reagan is yet another Republican who can barely suppress his sexual quirks.

Of course, Abraham Lincoln detested the Mexican-American war every bit as much as Dean hates the madness in Iraq. Someone should ask little Mikey if he also would have advocated a noose for Abe...

Brief update on the WIlkes/Cunningham scandal

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Deeper into the Wilkes/MZM scandals (Updated)

(Note: If you came here by way of LiePar Destin's excellent piece in Kos, you may want to read "Wilkes: The Invisible Empire" first. Also, I'm happy to report that this blockbuster piece on Wilkes in the San Diego Union Tribune strengthens the thesis presented here.)

The good news is that reporters working for the mainstream media have caught on -- in part. They understand that Randy "Duke" Cunningham is hardly the only Republican politician to receive economic "assistance" from Brent Wilkes, head of the Poway-based "defense" firm ADCS -- a.k.a. the Wilkes Corporation, a.k.a. Group W Advisors, a.k.a. lots of other names.

But they still treat this company as though it were something real. Not a single mainstream reporter has scrutinized those web sites and reported on the obvious signs of fakery.

No reporters -- and, for that matter, no procurement officers at the Pentagon -- bothered to do any checking at the patent office. If they had, they would have found that there are no patents covering the "proprietary" designs and innovative equipment advertised by the many ADCS subsidiary firms.

The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.

Want proof?

Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes -- a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128.

That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is www.mirrorlabs.com.

That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.

However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.

(Update: A background check on www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes' fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)

I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money?

Here is the organization that really has -- or had -- offices at that address: ADCS PAC. That's where the money went.

Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.

So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?

Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.

All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.

The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other "subsidiaries" were also used as funding mechanisms.

By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?

Other recipients of Wilkes' largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole -- whose husband, as you may recall from yesterday's post, lent his name to Reverend Moon's "stamp out the cross" crusade. Talk about being on the Dole!

Did all these pols understand the ultimate source of the funds? Perhaps not. However, we know that Duncan Hunter -- chairman of the House Armed Services Committee -- was a big ADCS pusher:

Since 1994, Wilkes and ADCS gave $40,700 in campaign contributions to Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican who now chairs the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter has acknowledged that he joined with Cunningham in 1999 to contact Pentagon officials who reversed a decision and gave ADCS one of its first big contracts, for nearly $10 million." (USA Today, 11/29/05)

And then there's Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections.

Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you're missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself -- using "false fronts" to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials.

Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.

I rarely beg my readers, but in this case I must: Please get the word out. This type of investigative work should not be left to the likes of me (or John Dean, or Daniel Hopsicker). Someone in the major media -- or Congress, or the Justice Department -- must investigate.

This scandal could and should be bigger than Plamegate

Who is the "inside man" in the Pentagon? I cannot believe that checks went to Wilkes based purely on the say-so of Duke Cunningham or the other bribed pols. Someone in the Pentagon's procurement offices must be signing off on these expenditures. If investigators identify the person or persons involved, then this conspiracy can be blown wide open.

John Dean found that each of the DOD contracts to ADCS and its related firms were prepared by "DOD_MIGRATOR" -- whoever or whatever that may mean. I'm hardly an expert on Defense Department procurement procedures, so I cannot tell if this nomenclature is standard or unusual. But since each award is numbered, it should not be difficult for an investigator to track down the real person behind DOD_MIGRATOR.

Another oddity: According to Dean, on each ADCS form -- whatever the year -- the company is listed as having 130 employees and annual revenues of "$13,345,9." (Yes, that is the figure given.) These numbers, I am told, never vary.

On the MZM front: Is the other company that bribed Cunningham real or fake? What, precisely, do they do?

Ah, there's the rub: We're dealing with black budget stuff. We're not supposed to know what they do. Alas, in such a world we cannot easily know if they do...anything.

MZM, run by Mitchell Wade -- a longtime member of the Wilkes/Cunningham "posse" -- began life in the early 1990s. Yet during most of the ensuing years, it made little impact on the world. As a "defense and intelligence" firm, it seems to have sprung from nothing in 2002, like a Rambo-ized Venus from the brow of Ares.

This page from (of all things) the Panama American Chamber of Commerce contains some interesting info about MZM: The address is 1523 New Hampshire Ave., N.W.; Washington, DC 20036, USA. The only email contact addresses go to Wade and a man named Joel Cornelison.

Their line of work? Surprisingly enough -- it's a law firm!

When the firm began life in 1993, Wade and Cornelison -- the only names connected with the place -- were "business consultants."

More recently, MZM originated a 501(c)3 nonprofit called the "Sure Foundation" -- allegedly an organization devoted to refugee aid -- which shares the same address. The address was also used by the front company which purchased Cunningham's home at an inflated price.

The Sure Foundation website (the contents of which are quoted here) used to refer to MZM as its "first corporate sponsor." MZM's line of work has changed once more: Now they provide "data warehousing and information technology consulting services to both governmental and non-governmental entities."

That description may be literally true, if we presume that they kept a few floppy disks or notebooks hanging around the office.

So far, I've seen no evidence that the Sure Foundation actually transferred monies to starving refugees. However, we do know that MZM did distribute funds to certain "needy" individuals: Republican politicians.

Wade, unlike Wilkes, kept the MZM Pac housed in the very same office. (We must presume that they didn't have a great deal of office space, since unrelated tenants are in the same building.) When we look at the data on MZM Pac and its activities in 2003-2004, we learn that the population of this company has grown by leaps and bounds.

The PAC now lists roughly 100 names. A close scan of the names indicates that wives and children were recruited to the cause -- the cause being, of course, donations to G.O.P. candidates. (One of the named donors is "Joe Dollar." That can't be real -- can it?) Nearly all the donors are listed as employees of MZM Inc., and many have grandiose titles -- Chairman of this, VP of that.

MZM employees, we learn, were told they had to make the donations or be fired. I believe there are laws against that sort of thing.

Frankly, I'm not at all sure how MZM transformed itself from a two-man law office (I'm picturing a Republican version of Daredevil's Nelson and Murdoch) into a go-go defense and intelligence firm.

For that, it would seem, is the final incarnation of MZM. According to the Center for Public Integrity,

MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company's Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.

In addition to its D.C. headquarters, MZM has field offices in Miami, Tampa, San Antonio, San Diego and Suffolk, Va. The company employs about 70 people.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has "come out of a flat period" with defense industry contracts.

In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.

In November 2002, MZM opened a computer center in Charlottesville, Va., to house classified engineering intelligence in a digital mapping and architecture analysis system. Twelve employees in that office are developing the program for the Pentagon. It is designed to provide digital maps of thousands of buildings worldwide. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the mapping system will help soldiers and planners know details of buildings -- even which way doors open and close.

At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. The data page goes on to name a number of individuals involved with this work -- intelligence analysts, generals, the kind of people whom we would expect to be involved with such an enterprise. Cornelison seems to have disappeared.

But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL -- www.mzinc.com -- is blank, as is Google's cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000.

However, we do know that they did open a fairly large facility in Martinsville, Virgina.

The Center for Public Integrity is trustworthy, but they can only relate what they've been told -- and at this point, who can be sure if a company like MZM is telling the truth? Obviously, Wade's creation (unlike many of the Wilkes pseudocompanies) does actual work for the military/intelligence complex; as we've seen, they've even provided office furniture for the White House. Even so, we must still ask: How and why did Wade's tiny firm suddenly grow like Topsy? Who is Mitchell Wade? Is he a lawyer, a businessman, a spook, or...what?

Which brings us to the larger question surrounding these out-of-nowhere defense firms: How much of this stuff is real?

Truth

Next time some guy tries to tell you why Kerry lost, tell 'im that Bush lost. And if he doesn't believe you, send him to Truth Is All's new site, www.truthisall.net. (Although I admit that TIA needs a good, simple, concise introduction for non-math geeks and newcomers.)

Neil before the Lord

(Note: If you came for the latest on the Wilkes/Cunningham scandal, scroll down a couple of posts. I should have some new material up soon.)

So why is Neil Bush -- the president's brother and notorious S&L crook -- hanging out with the even more notorious Reverend Sun Myung Moon, cult leader and self-proclaimed Lord of the Second Advent?

Although the Bush family has long-standing ties to Moon (see here and here), members of our ruling dynasty have carefully avoided being photographed alongside the Korean "Messiah." No doubt, this reticence stems from Moon's known ties to Fascists, North Korea, drug money and other unsavories. Worse, his theology (Jesus was a failure; Moon's the better Messiah), not to mention his history of having sex with his followers, would annoy most members of the Christian right.

But here we have what I believe to be a shot of Neil Bush alongside the Reverend Moon. They travelled to Manila to inaugurate Moon's latest project: A "spiritual" version of the United Nations, called the Universal Peace Federation, which seems to be an outgrowth of Moon's International Inter-religious Federation for World Peace. (He gives these things such lovely names, doesn't he?) See here for more.

Interestingly, the IIFWP played a roll in a previous Moon-approved crusade that nearly all Christians would find particularly appalling. Just last year, this front group made an attempt to convince (and by "convince," I mean bribe) churches to get rid of their crosses. Moon does not like the cross. In truth, he doesn't like Jesus either, although his followers tend to keep the spotlight well away from that corner of his theological foundation.

Rather than the traditional egg hunt, this group, calling itself the American Clergy Leadership Conference, sponsored a nationwide "Tear Down The Cross" day for Easter, 2003. Last week, leaders in this radical cause presided over a Washington prayer breakfast featuring messages of thanks from the presidents. Former Senator Bob Dole came in person.

Mostly African-American, pastors who joined in 2003's ACLC-sponsored "Tear Down The Cross" won gold watches from the wealthy group, which unabashedly claims in its publications to have stripped churches of over a hundred crosses over the Easter holiday alone. This, movement leaders said, cleared the way for a new age and second messiah.

Bob Dole? Lucre can tempt even the best of us into unsavory activites, but surely there are limits. And one of those limits would be asking a professed Christian to toss the cross in the garbage.

Even moderate Republicans, such as Dole, seem to have no shame.

And what about Neil? Interestingly enough, this is not the first time his name has been linked with a cult. Three years ago, Neil functioned as a spokesman for Scientology when he appeared before a Congressional committee in opposition to the use of Ritalin. (This is one case in which the Hubbardites may have a point. Even so, a presidential brother should never associate with a cult front group.)

The fling with the Thetans was a passing fancy; the Bush family's real loyalties remain with Moon.

When a Moon front group called the American Clergy Leadership Conference sponsored its "Tear Down the Cross" day, both 41 and 43 made public declarations of approval:

According to a report in the Washington Times as well as video found on the Moon-affiliated Web site FamilyFed.org, the elder Bush made a taped appearance before the ACLC's 3,000-strong crowd, which he thanked for their work. "I thought about parachuting into the building," he joked about wishing he could make it. And he paid lip service to Moon's unwieldy religious jargon, using phrases like "peace centered on God," a goal that he called "right on target."

His son, George W. Bush, wrote a warm letter of support presented at the event by a state senator, in which the president and his wife Laura sent his best wishes to the sponsors -- and thanked them for rallying his "armies of compassion." It is unclear what the ACLC has done for society's problems, though its Web site is selling a video called "Beyond The Cross," and an affiliated Moon front group, Free Teens USA, has received almost half a million dollars under Bush's Abstinence-Only program.

Can you imagine -- can you imagine -- the outcry of horror that would have erupted if Bill Clinton or anyone in his family had given a public thumbs-up to the purveyors of "take down the cross day"? When are the "Christians" in this country going to wake up?

Note to Neil: Father Moon mandates that you cannot have sex without a picture of Moon overseeing your activity. Better remember that, next time you hear one of those inexplicable knocks at the door...

California's fight is your fight

As you may know, democracy is under attack in California. If Diebold wins here, the Republicans will control the presidency forever. Debra Bowen, an honest state legislator who hopes to become Secretary of State, has made it easy for you to send a message that could impact the future. You don't need to be a California resident. Please help!

The Poway Mafia

This is a brief update to the story below: I hope readers understand the importance of this. The bribe money Cunningham (and others?) took is insignificant. What matters is the strong possibility that the Poway-based Wilkes company strip-mined the DOD for the better part of a billion dollars without actually providing the goods and services that would justify such a taxpayer investment.

The various Wilkes companies seem to have existed primarily in cyberspace. The web sites provided no personnel information and no hard data about previous customers or services that had been rendered. These were "let's pretend" companies.

Quite a few web sites can be traced to Wilkes. The most amusing of the lot was this one. I'm sure it was just a joke, but some jokes tell the deepest truths, eh wot?

Forget Duke Cunningham. Take a look at THE PEOPLE WHO BRIBED HIM. (Updated)

(Note: If you came here by way of What Really Happened or Raw Story, you should know that my most recent article on this topic presents a much more detailed and formal investigation. And I just may have some breakthrough news on this front before the weekend is out. Stay tuned!)

Folks, I beg you to read through what promises to be a longish post. And when you're done reading, please point others toward it. I've done some research into previously-unexplored areas of a massive corruption scandal.

The journey began early this morning, when I made a stop at Daniel Hopsicker's site, where he has an important new story up: "Cunningham Stripped $700 Million from U.S. Defense -- 'Dukester's' Epic Boo-Hoo Hiding Massive Pentagon Rip-Off."

Hopsicker looks at a California firm called ADCS, which is part of the Wilkes Corporation, which lobbies -- and funds -- a number of Republican politicians, not just Cunningham. Wilkes operates under a variety of names -- the primary sobriquet seems to be "Group W Advisors." The whole shebang is owned by a 50 year-old businessman named Brent Wilkes and his wife Regina.

According to Hopsicker, Wilkes may have subterranean ties to the sleazy world of Jack Abramoff. At this point, I'm not sure. Those interested in pursuing that angle should read Hopsicker's piece and come to their own conclusions.

Even without the Abramoff connection, a little hard-core Googling placed this company in a very interesting light.

Before we go any further, let's clarify one matter: Mitchell Wade, owner of MZM -- the other company accused of bribing Duke Cunnigham -- is described as a "former employee" of Wilkes. And since Wilkes has a dizzying number of "spin-off" firms, who can really say, at this point, where Wilkes ends and MZM begins?

Wilkes runs his own PAC, named ADCS Inc. PAC. He uses that venue and a number of others to grease his way through the corridors of power. ADCS is frequently referred to as a "defense" firm or an "IT" firm. While it does seem to have some history in the field of document services, few have looked into the question of just what it is these people do for the DOD. When folks show up for work at 13970 Stowe Drive in Poway, California, how do they occupy their time?

I believe that this "defense firm" is little more a Potemkin village. A movie set. A false construct.

My findings were summarized in a letter to Hopsicker, which I will share with you here.

* * *

Daniel,

I was going to write just a brief squib directing my readers to your latest piece on Cunningham and his "sugar daddy," Brent Wilkes. Then I noticed that Wilkes corp -- or ADCS, or whatever the hell he's calling it -- is located in Poway, CA. That aroused my interest, because my ladyfriend grew up in that town.

So I started to do some research.

NOTHING ABOUT THAT FIRM MAKES ANY SENSE!

These people built an ostentatious, massive $11 million facility in a small town. Their web page and their ad on Monster list a LOT of subsidiary or related firms.

Note: The subsidiary firms are no longer listed and described on the main web page for Wilkes. You can find that stuff on the old page, still available via Google's cache function.

Yet this story says that ADCS has only about 100 employees.

Only a hundred staffers in a place like that? Each worker must have his own suite!

By the way, the "Bryan Wilkes" listed in the above-cited story is probably the same person who functions as the press secretary for Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA). Check out Royce -- his background might prove as interesting as Cunningham's.

You want to know how weird ADCS is? One of their sub-companies is called Group W Media. The ADCS website describes this company thus:

"Group W Media is a full-service marketing agency offering marketing, advertising, web design and hosting, event planning and graphic design services."

Now go to their web site: www.groupwmedia.net

That is NOT the website for any kind of legitimate advertising or marketing firm.
Look, I've done a lot of work for advertising agencies. I know what an ad firm's web page should look like. Any site in that field will always be flashy, glitzy, cutting edge, "in your face" -- and generously filled with samples of previous work. You would NOT have to log in to see what's going on at a real ad agency. As a moment's thought will tell you, any ad firm is going to pull out out all the stops when it comes to advertising itself.

Group W Media is some sort of cover.

That may sound overly dramatic, but I'm dead serious. That web page is fishier than "Finding Nemo."

I've been taking a look at all the subsidiary firms, and I have yet to see any indication that ADCS actually provides any kind of services to anyone.

Admittedly, my research is preliminary -- but right now, nearly ALL of those subsidiary firms have the odor of the bogus.

Well, there is one ADCS subsidiary that DOES seem to do something -- Group W Events. They do catering. They also host events at the ADCS corporate HQ in Poway. This whole thing seems to be headed up by Brent's wife Regina.

One of her few known clients was...herself. She catered her own fiftieth birthday party. She also put together a huge bash for Republican legislator John Doolittle, another recipient of Wilkes' largesse.

We know that ADCS -- a.k.a. Group W advisors -- has made quite a few political payoffs. This page lists two of the mechanisms as Perfect Wave Technologies and Pure Aqua Technologies. Google provides no hint that either of those companies does any actual work.

Note: Perfect Wave also seems to have funneled money to Texans for a Republican Majority. This may be part of the money that Tom Delay sent out for laundering. See here.

The only Group W employee I've been able to find any background on is a guy named Mark Turok. He has identified himself as Group W's "senior legislative analyst." He seems to have arranged for some of the political donations. He also ran a not-terribly-interesting right-wing blog for a while, although he stopped posting about the time the Cunningham scandal came to light.

The most interesting thing I could find out about Turok is that he's the alumni of "Christian Unified Schools," an institution founded by Tim LaHaye. That factoid may or may not be relevant.

My point is this: I'm unconvinced that the Wilkes corp actually does ANYTHING. Gina Wilkes knows how to throw a nice party, but that's about it. I have a strange feeling that this company exists for the sole purpose of getting massive Defense contracts, which are probably subcontracted out to real firms that do the real work.

I hope that some of this provides you with a few interesting leads. I may publish a version of this letter on my own blog, if only because doing so will save me the trouble of having to write it all out again. (Obviously, I won't publish any reply you make unless you ask me to do so.) Please keep pursuing this story -- my gut tells me that the scandal here is pretty damned sizable.

-- C

UPDATE: I've been privately told by someone I trust that the closest thing to an actual service Wilkes has provided to the DOD was, in essence, xeroxing. If that's true, then -- well, what can one say? Look at the amount of money involved! There's a sort of genius at work here...

What's in a name?

Rumsfeld has announced that from now on, the insurgents in Iraq won't be called "insurgents." Blogger Tim Dunlop adds: "He also decreed war to be peace, freedom to be slavery, ignorance to be strength and that he would in future be known as Dimples 'Hung-Like-A-Horse' O'Toole, the handsomest man in the world."

Briefly...

Sometimes the simplest games are downright addictive. And sometimes they are also downright hilarious. Check out the "Give Bush a Brain" game, and see if you can beat my score of six brains. A perfect score may end the war.

And... Remember our discussion of the fear-mongering Republican kids' book Help! There are Liberals Under My Bed!? Looks like the Dems have an answer: Why Mommy is a Democrat. No paranoia; just niceness.

I believe children should be kept paranoia-free until the age of ten. That's when you should hand 'em a copy of my upcoming book for young readers, Mystery of the Grassy Knoll...