More recent "breakthroughs" in the DC Madam account

Things are proceeding nicely, if not endlessly, with the text and the interested should know that a release date within the year is a strong possibility, no later than early 2012. Hey, let's wish us all luck with that one, we're going to need it in the coming months, and that ain't hay, brother--we're in the thick of it.

I told Jeane's former counselor, Montgomery Blair Sibely, back in late 2008 that she should have stayed alive since things were going to collapse anyway--she might have been able to walk right out of her cell. This was at the onset of the economic crisis, or rather, when it began affecting the American middle class, the only time it's "important."

There have been some "new" developments during the writing, revising, and editing process: most writers and researchers know that sometimes you can go back and look at the information with new eyes, a different context, more information, and so on, and notice something you might have missed the first time around. This wasn't a case of that entirely, since I had some terrifying suspicions during my time doing research for Jeane's defense. They point right back to the CIA and defense-intelligence contractors. Some of it relates to Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, former-and-convicted Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and what I consider to be an elephant in the room: their involvement in air operations with the Agency's SAD (Special Activities Division), yes, the section that does what you think they do.

They also run the drone program in AFPAK, killing maybe thousands (who's counting?) of people who were never in their sights. Why didn't all of this get more play? You tell me, they must have a Red Bat Phone to all the editors.

Frequently, the SAD illegally assassinates human targets that they originally set out to, remarkable, I know. They also sometimes grab people, throw them into business jets they've hired-out (contracted would be a more accurate term, but what the hell), and have them interrogated on dubious grounds in some other nation, more often to manufacture false intelligence to justify reckless foreign policy with molding public opinion in mind. Wilkes's ADCS (Automatic Document Conversion Service) was acting as a front company for SAD, as found in the 2009 "sentencing memorandum appendix" for Foggo. Direct knowledge of the rendition program was some of the "graymail" during his legal proceedings, that he would tell all about it if he got hit with too stiff a sentence.

It goes without saying that I believe, and have believed all along, that her case was about Hookergate, that it wasn't separate from it at all. Motions by the prosecution during the proceedings make this patently clear, and The Smoking Gun's Bill Bastone did more than a little tipping-off on the connection between Palfrey and the "Poway Mob," convicted former California Rep. Randy Cunningham, Brent R. Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, and Kyle Foggo, all involved in bribery, influence peddling, abuse of office, corruption, etc., to bilk the public under the banner of national security and the war on terror. Call it what you want, but it's really war profiteering, outright corruption.

I believe that Jeane was correct and sincere when she said to me and others that Brent R. Wilkes had called her "frequently" and had "used his own name." I believe he was calling from the Westin Grand, the Watergate Hotel, or from someone else's residence, someone who might come off as innocuous in her phone records. There's something very, very dark here that I believe leads to the rendition program, it wasn't just about Wilkes ferrying Cunningham and Tom Delay around for free, literally on the public's dime. That's illegal too. Now Wilkes is out on appeal and Palfrey's long dead, perhaps safely so in their eyes. This does not mean that I believe she was murdered or that he's ever going to admit to an association with her.

The other player in procuring prostitutes to acquire appropriations was Mitchell Wade--he was handling a lot of the procuring for Wilkes, per his testimony in the record, and he was going through Christopher D. Baker's Shirlington Limo who still runs his firm out of a hangar at Ronald Reagan National Airport, Hangar 7, another convenient place--at least before all of the attention--to run a front company and SAD air operations out of. There was a lot of "ferrying" going on, apparently, to the point that Wilkes was handling many of the calls, lining things up himself. And that's when I believe he fucked up and used his own name on the phone when he spoke with Jeane, all due to his exaggerated sense of self-importance at the time. Hey, he was rubbing elbows with the CIA's brass, he was in the big time.

Wilkes probably thought that he was impervious, so he walked around with his dick out, just like the Republican lobbyists, former and current GOP incumbents (people like Cunningham), and bureaucratic CIA hacks (like Foggo) he was greasing, greasing to feed on public monies, did. They were all laughing at that very same public with their hooker-and-cigar parties at those two hotels, possibly even at some private homes, playing poker, but really mixing business and pleasure, the hallmark of every fuck up. Wilkes had no prior experience providing aviation services, to anyone, but who really cared? Subordinates who could report it.

In 2003, Foggo wrangled Wilkes a bottled water contract for a CIA field station; some accounts state that the water was headed for Iraq, the record steers clear of exactly where, but it appears that it was Germany. Why would they need bottled water exactly? What was wrong with the local fare? Perhaps it was a case of repeated dysentery, but it's a peculiar contract, that "bottled water" one. Again, no prior experience, and the water was simply purchased off-the-shelf, maybe even from a Wal-Mart, then marked-up 60%, as the court's record states in Foggo's case.

Consider all of the above the next time the Republicans start yammering about the deficit and the national debt.

I've written on some of this before, but there's something here beyond mere profiteering, it's worse, far worse, and the narrowing of the DC Madam scandal to "big names" (everyone but Cunningham, Wade, Foggo and Wilkes) by the mainstream press was both cunning and another pathetic example of their loyalty to established power. They were hiding something very ugly here, it might have had something to do with the rendition program, but it most certainly had to do with defense-intelligence (mis)appropriations, the corrupt contractors who were gaming the system, major league DC lobbyists, political operatives and the seeding of the bureaucracy, and what the decline of an empire looks like.

This text will be a testament to these times, at a threshold moment in world history when above and below temporarily change places.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/foggo_139_2.pdf

http://www.city-data.com/businesses/639735166-shirlington-limousine-washington-dc.html

The Real Reason Dennis Hastert is Resigning

Washington D.C./San Diego--All roads appear to be leading to both cities in a number of current scandals, and it appears that Illinois GOP Rep. Dennis Hastert is just another inept and corrupt fish caught in the nets of ongoing investigations, trials, and hearings. But if one reads the coverage today of Hastert's announcement that he won't be serving-out the rest of his term, one would think it has nothing to do with anything at all--just that it's time.

Indeed it is, because yesterday former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert was named in one of the hearings regarding the ever-widening net cast in the trial of Brent Wilkes, former proprietor of a San Diego-based defense contractor called "ADCS" that received incredible payouts in contracts thanks to the undue influence of then-Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

Like Hastert, Cunningham is also a failed athlete and human being. Yet, besides being a former High School teacher (the last to know how things really work in America), Hastert was also a wrestling coach at that time, so one can assume he's been wrong-headed most of his natural--if not public--life. If you've been reading about the Brent Wilkes/Randy Cunningham saga at all, you'll note that the mainstream media has done its best to keep any other GOP congresspersons out of the spotlight, and as much as possible.

They're doing so today. Virtually none of the stories by the major wire services are connecting the decision of Hastert not to serve out the rest of his term with the testimony yesterday of Wilkes' nephew (and second--or third depending on the news source--hireling of Wilkes' contractor company ADCS) Joel Combs.

Wilkes also paid to fly Cunningham and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert from a golf outing in Palm Springs to San Diego for a reception and then back to Washington on private jets, Combs testified. Combs told prosecutors he didn't recall Cunningham ever volunteering to cover his share of the expenses. He said on cross-examination that he would not have been responsible for processing any reimbursements and did not know whether company accountants ever billed the congressman or his campaigns. Cunningham occasionally paid for wine at dinner with Wilkes, Combs testified. (AP, 10.17.2007)

And so, there it is: Wilkes appears to have allowed Hastert and Cunningham to come to San Diego on his dime, play some golf, and to fly back to Washington on separate, privately chartered jets. Yes, it's time alright. It's time for Dennis Hastert to secure legal representation if he doesn't have it already. He's in a lot of trouble, but at least the mainstream press is providing some cover for him and buying him some much needed time to regroup.

It begs-the-question: what other contractors in San Diego might be involved? Or are there just similar scandals waiting to be uncovered in the big defense contractor city? It's peculiar, a bunch of failed athletes who aren't particularly bright--one might be forgiven for thinking we were referring to the president, but like minds keep company. Considering Cunningham once served on the House Intelligence Committee, it might be a good idea to ask if SAIC (based in San Diego) had their fingers in the pie. You never know. The Wilkes trial is nearly over:

Brent Wilkes has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges of bribery, money laundering, fraud and conspiracy. The government entered phone records and other documents Thursday before jurors returned to the courtroom. They called their final witnesses Wednesday, including women who testified they were paid to have sex with Cunningham and Wilkes at a Hawaiian resort. Federal prosecutors have rested their case in the trial of a defense contractor charged with bribing former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. (AP, 10.18.2007)

Were they bribing Rep. Cunningham and others in Congress for contracts? It appears a strong possibility. Who else? Are others still doing so with other representatives? It deserves investigation. As this is being written, the prosecution has rested, and the defense has begun making its case. It's unclear whether a prima facie case(by all appearances unless rebutted) has been made at this point.

Hastert is also connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal and received over $100,000 in donations from the lobbyist's fundraising efforts on his behalf. It's appropriate at this point to consider that a March 2007 article on SAIC has fingered them on some serious ethical violations involving their work as a defense/intelligence contractor.

More recently, in June of this year, The San Diego Reader outlined some interesting connections between Brent Wilkes and another San Diego area based defense contractor, one Mitchell Wade. For months Wade has been confessing to government investigators the gist of it all: that Wilkes was running a system of bribes and rewards in-exchange for defense contracts in DC (and probably in the environs of San Diego when necessary), and maybe not just for himself. He has some strange accomplices.

Among those implicated is Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, an ex-San Diego cop, SDSU grad, and CIA agent. A boyhood friend of Wilkes, Foggo had been appointed to the CIA's third-highest post by Porter Goss, who recently was forced out of his job by the president. The latest San Diego link was first reported by the Washington Post on May 6: Jerome Foster, a downtown San Diego-based businessman. Foster was on the board of Shirlington Limousine, the company that furnished transportation for the alleged Cunningham assignations. Christopher Baker, Shirlington's owner, has a criminal history that reportedly includes felony charges for attempted robbery and car theft. (San Diego Reader, 06.08.2006)

And as quoted before on this site, Foster did subcontracting work with SAIC, primarily to secure them contracts as an almost "dummy firm" to increase their ability to hold more contracts than they were qualified to under federal statutes. But hey, what's the law mean under the current administration? Not much. Hastert sees the writing on the wall. It's time.

AP yesterday, and in another context so you don't notice: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRUhowrjXrAojU5jM1zd2hyExSAQ

Signs on San Diego today: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20071018-9999-1m18wilkes.html

AP today on the Wilkes trial: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7212206

The San Diego Reader, June 8, 2006: http://www.sdreader.com/php/cityshow.php?id=1404