Regards, Ivan
Posted on 05/13/2006 12:36:06 AM PDT by MadIvan
Federal agents yesterday raided the home and office of the CIA's outgoing number three in a dramatic deepening of corruption investigations at America's premier spy agency.
Search warrants were executed by several federal law enforcement agencies against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the FBI said.
Mr Foggo resigned as CIA executive director on Monday, just after the still unexplained departure of agency director Porter Goss.
Mr Goss, who is not accused of wrongdoing, appointed Mr Foggo to his post.
Television news helicopters showed aerial images of men wearing white forensic suits entering and leaving Mr Foggo's home in suburban Virginia.
Mr Foggo is under investigation by the FBI, the CIA's inspector general, the tax authorities and the Defence Criminal Investigative Service.
They have been looking into reports that defence contractors organised late night poker games for top spies and legislators at the Watergate hotel in Washington.
One of the contractors alleged to have been involved was a boyhood friend of Mr Foggo. He was also involved with a company which won a CIA contract to supply agents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Investigators are seeking to establish whether the contract was improperly awarded. Mr Foggo denies any wrongdoing.
The CIA recently released a statement which stated: "Mr Foggo maintains that government contracts for which he was responsible were properly awarded and administered."
The investigation is a spin-off from the inquiry into disgraced Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for corruptly accepting more than $2.4 million (£1.2 million) from contractors.
Regards, Ivan
Have to admit that Republicans police their own and tolerate far less than Democrats accept from theirs.
One reason the Congressional Republicans dislike the President is his "everybody does time" policy. Used to be, if they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, all they got was a slap on the hand. Now, they go to jail. Some of them probably wish they had Clinton back probably. Cronies love fellow cronies that let cronies do what cronies are wont to do.
Ping!
Yowza PING!!
I'm not so sure this guy Foggio is "one of their own".
Also, I don't believe this raid was conducted primarily for the Cunningham investigation. I think it's about leaks and Plame/Wilson-style rogue operations to hurt the Bush Administration.
Will you please add me to your ping list?
Thanks!
If not one of our own, at least one of our own mistakes if the allegations turn out to be true.
I swear, if this were still a Clinton administration, the whole deal would've been handled quietly, with people dismissed, no charges, and nothing in the news. In exchange, said people would be hit up for donations and blackmailed for the rest of their lives. A small price to pay for covering up illegal and criminal activity on the public dime from the perspective the guilty party.
Remember that one of Clinton's first acts as President - - completely unprecedented - - was to fire EVERY lawyer in the justice department and then stock the place with loyal political hacks.
Who can forget?
Feds Search Home, Office of CIA Official By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 5 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Federal agents searched the home and office of the CIA's departing No. 3 official on Friday as part of a corruption investigation that has sent a former congressman to prison and now involves CIA contracts.
Investigators from five federal agencies acted under search warrants at the home of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo in Vienna, Va., and his office at the CIA's Langley, Va., campus, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said. Both locations are in the Washington suburbs.
The warrants themselves were sealed and officials would not discuss what agents were seeking.
Foggo agreed to step down as the CIA's executive officer under pressure because federal authorities are investigating whether he improperly awarded contracts to San Diego businessman and friend Brent Wilkes, according to federal law enforcement and intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations were ongoing.
Prosecutors have implicated Wilkes in a scheme to bribe former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., but he has not been charged and his lawyer has said Wilkes did nothing wrong.
Among the contracts under scrutiny is one that dates from Foggo's previous job of running the logistics at a secret facility in Europe that supplies CIA personnel in war zones, the law enforcement official said. Foggo gave the multimillion-dollar contract to supply bottled water to a Wilkes-related company, the official said.
Foggo, who was in the process of clearing out his office at the end of a 25-year CIA career, has denied any wrongdoing. "Mr. Foggo maintains that government contracts for which he was responsible were properly awarded and administered," the CIA said in a statement last week.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said Friday that top CIA officials were informed of the warrants shortly before the searches began. "The agency is cooperating fully with the Department of Justice and the FBI," she said.
The agencies taking part in the searches are: the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Attorney's office in San Diego and the CIA's inspector general, Weierman said.
The inspector general has been investigating Foggo's relationship with Wilkes for more than two months.
The inquiry stems from the investigation of Cunningham, who is serving a prison term of more than eight years after admitting last year that he took $2.4 million in bribes from government contractors. Mitchell Wade, another contractor, pleaded guilty in February to conspiring with Cunningham and is cooperating with investigators.
Wilkes is described in court papers as an unindicted coconspirator.
The investigation includes allegations, raised by Wade, that Wilkes provided Cunningham with prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites.
Foggo has acknowledged participating in poker games organized by Wilkes at the hotel rooms, but he has said nothing untoward went on while he was there. "If he attended occasional card games with friends over the years, Mr. Foggo insists they were that and nothing more," the CIA statement said.
Lawyers for Wilkes and the limousine company, Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., of Arlington, Va., also have denied any involvement with prostitutes.
Foggo announced his retirement from the agency this week, three days after CIA Director Porter Goss said he would be stepping down.
Dyck said the Foggo investigation has "absolutely nothing, zero" to do with Goss' resignation.
Goss asked Foggo to step down as executive director last week because he felt the accusations had become a distraction and could damage the agency's reputation, the unnamed intelligence official said.
Foggo's associates have said he received the Intelligence Commendation Medal for supporting the war on terror in 2002. Before becoming the agency's No. 3 leader in 2004, he was the chief of base at a secret facility that supports the war on terror.
As executive director, Foggo had the powerful position of overseeing the day-to-day operations of the CIA.
One FBI agent told reporters from Copley News Service, who were at Foggo's residence, that Foggo was not at home in his quiet suburban neighborhood near CIA headquarters and had not been detained. The agents refused to answer other questions about the raid.
A neighbor told Copley that the agents arrived about 8 a.m. EDT. A white Chevrolet van was backed up to the carport of the split-level brick home and, at one point, a man wearing latex gloves emerged from the house and went around back.
___
Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader contributed to this report.
And barely a peep out of the dying dinosaur press. "It's unprecedented but hey, Bill Clinton is the President and he can do that." I remember that that was their general response to Clinton's purge.
Now imagine for one minute that it was Bush who made that unprecedented move. The uproar and the righteous indignation from the scumbag liberal newsrooms would have been palpable.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Bush didn't do exactly the same thing that Clinton had done. Bush could merely have explained that Clinton had set the precedent and he was following suit - - "What's the big deal?" The Democrats and their allies in the dinosaur newsrooms could only smolder in silence or reveal once again their shameless hypocrisy.
Mostly I think Bush wants to avoid that particular fight, with the hope that attrition and successive Republican administrations will fix the problem without getting his administration stuck in yet another fight with the MSM and the Democrats. There are plenty of more important issues on which to fight the MSM and Democrats.
It is also probably more difficult to convince conservatives to leave lucrative private sector jobs to take staff positions in government agencies who are likely to be terminated as soon as a Democrat is hired. Democrat stooges are a dime a dozen, and difficult to gainfully employ in the private sector, so they're always available for public sector service.
FROM THIS ARTICLE:
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said the Foggo investigation has "absolutely nothing, zero" to do with Goss' resignation.
Goss asked Foggo to step down as executive director last week because he felt the accusations had become a distraction and could damage the agency's reputation, the unnamed intelligence official said.
_________________________________________________________
MAY 8 MSNBC REPORT:"Earlier today, the agency circulated an internal announcement that agency’s third ranking official, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, has decided to step aside. News of Foggo’s departure inevitably will be overshadowed by the Hayden nomination, but its effects will continue to resonate within the agency. "
"" group of poker players who took part in a 1999 game arranged by Wilkes and attended by Foggo, Cunningham and a nine-fingered former CIA officer named Brant Bassett, who worked for Goss when the outgoing CIA chief was House Intelligence Committee chair""
\\_____________________________________________________
NEW YORK TIMES May 13
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0513foggo-connection0513.html
"Foggo, 51, has admitted attending poker parties throughout the 1990s that Wilkes held in a suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The parties were primarily attended by CIA officials and congressmen, and Cunningham, R-Calif., occasionally attended. Several news media accounts have reported that prostitutes frequented the parties.
Foggo was one of many CIA officials close to Wilkes. In May 2000, Wilkes paid Brant Bassett, a retired German-speaking CIA official known as Nine Fingers, a $5,000 fee to travel to Germany for five days as a consultant on a business deal that Wilkes was negotiating with a German software engineer, according to a former agency official aware of the arrangement.
The official was granted anonymity to speak about the business deal.
Foggo introduced Bassett to Wilkes in the early 1990s in Mexico City, the former official said.
Before ascending to the top tier of the agency, Foggo had spent his career in what was previously known as the Directorate of Administration, now called the Directorate of Support. It is responsible for running the business side of the agency, and its duties include buying supplies, renting offices and handling bookkeeping.
Before being picked by Goss to become executive director, Foggo ran a secret CIA base in Frankfurt that supported operations in the Middle East and Africa. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, as agency operations have expanded in the region, the volume of money and goods handled by the Frankfurt base has grown rapidly, intelligence officials say.
According to Foggo's lawyer, William Hundley, the CIA is investigating whether during Foggo's time in Frankfurt he knowingly granted a contract to Archer Logistics, a Virginia company headed by a relative of Wilkes. Hundley said the contract was to deliver bottled water to CIA operatives in Iraq."
__________________________________________________________
MadIvan, keeping up with the cast of characters is hard enough. But once you start comparing articles, you realize what sounds so sinister in one MSM outlet, is nothing of the kind in another. For instance, "9 fingers". No, not a seedy film noir character played by Peter Lorre, (as some in the media would have you believe). Rather he was a longtime CIA employee who left the agency, then worked in the congressional office of former CIA agent Peter Goss.
The CIA's Inspector General is in on this investigation. Unmentioned in any of these articles is the reminder that fired Mary McCarthy worked in the CIA's IG office, and how her leaving might have been necessary to make sure classified info from the investigation wasn't leaked.
Just to keep it accurate: Slick ordered Janet Reno to fire all 93 US attorneys. Pretty bad, but I think there are more than 93 attorneys in the Justice Department.
Don't forge to check the freezer for a stash of cold cash!
If I recall correctly, (s)he did the same to the leadership of the FBI as well.
I worked with Janet Reno — also worked on her first case with her: "The Knights of the Round Table Case", a City of Coral Gables Police, police-shooting homicide case. That occurred some time in the '70's, and was the first case I could recall where the State went after the cops!
When she went to Washington, she stole-away with several 11th Judicial Circuit Assistant State Attorneys including a friend of mine. (Unfortunately, my portly male friend got caught up in "The Suits" scandal -- discounted business suits for Janet's buddies).
Then there was "Operation Court Broom". Ah, sweet reminiscing and oh, what a lovely time in Miami's Spanish-speaking courts 1972-2002!
Thanks for clarifying my shout.
Regards,
LH
I think that it is the rare individual in the CIA that is not a flaming America-hating liberal. The agency ought to be disbanded for the good of the country.
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