Robert W. Kelly is a Founder and Managing Partner of CenTauri. Prior to CenTauri, Mr. Kelly served as Vice President and General Counsel for Gray Hawk Systems Inc. and its successor ManTech-Gray Hawk.
Well, lookie here! Robert Kelly on the receiving end of this little scandal.
"Homeland Security Expert" -- pffft! Looks like another Brent Wilkes, to me.
Capitol Crooks (US News and World Report, 9/17/06)
It started with the bribery indictment of California Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham,
but before it's over, a sprawling investigation into a Pentagon contractor called MZM
could snare some of Washington's most powerful inside players...a massive corruption investigation involving [Mitchell] Wade, MZM, and [Randy "Duke] Cunningham. The former eight-term Republican congressman from California pleaded guilty last November to accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes and favors from Wade; his mentor, Brent Wilkes, a San Diego-based defense contractor; and two other "unindicted coconspirators."
"A huge spider web." Cunningham "earmarked" millions of dollars in defense . Cunningham now is serving an eight-year prison term, while Wade, 46, has pleaded guilty to paying Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes and is cooperating with prosecutors.
(snip)
• Wade made it appear that his employees were working for federal agencies in order to obtain their security clearances and used his connections to expedite them, MZM sources say. He urged employees not to disclose trips abroad, as required by law, and failed to disclose personal assets in Panama, another legal infraction.
• Wade had a highly classified Pentagon budget document lying on his desk. Prosecutors say Wade's extraordinary access gave him "insight" into the Defense Department's "bargaining position" and allowed MZM to "squeeze top dollar" out of a key proposal.
• Wade's close ties to former senior officials of a Pentagon agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which helps identify and thwart terrorists and spies, are also being examined. So is his relationship with a defense contractor called Gray Hawk Systems Inc. Gray Hawk obtained several lucrative and questionable contracts from CIFA, which it then shared with MZM. Three senior CIFA officials with influence over the contracting process left the agency and joined Gray Hawk. The company's owner, Harry "Pete" Howton, sold it last year for $100 million cash and has since created a new company, Kingfisher Systems Inc.
Through Gray Hawk, Wade won tens of millions of dollars in subcontracts on CIFA work. Investigators believe Wade sought out insiders at CIFA for tips on upcoming agency projects, which he then used to craft earmarks for Cunningham, who allegedly inserted them into appropriations bills and then pressured Pentagon officials to award the contracts to Gray Hawk and MZM. Howton, the former CEO of Gray Hawk and current CEO of Kingfisher, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
(snip)
In the fall of 2002, Burtt asked a team of private contractors, including MZM, to evaluate CIFA's unclassified and classified networks, installed by MZM's prime contractor, Gray Hawk. Defense Department rules require that even its unclassified day-to-day business must be handled within the Pentagon's secure .mil domain. But the evaluation team learned that Gray Hawk had built a .net commercial-type intranet instead. Separately, the team also discovered that most CIFA intelligence analysts lacked access to classified intelligence data, including situation reports of potential terrorist threats, stored in secured classified networks. "My comment was," a team member told U.S. News, "if these networks were airplanes, they would be crashing." But senior Gray Hawk officials, who were nervous and angry about the evaluation, repeatedly blocked the team members from giving Burtt an honest assessment, the team member said.
Around this same time, prosecutors say, Cunningham earmarked $6.3 million for projects "to benefit" CIFA in the fiscal 2003 legislation and told a fellow congressman not to make any decision that would hurt "his two top priorities," namely, Wade and Wilkes.
(snip)
Contractor [Mitchell] Wade pleads guilty in Cunningham bribery scandal (MZM, Inc.)
Defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to conspiring to funnel more than $1 million in bribes to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Wade, 46, admitted to his part in a payoff scheme intended to win federal contracts for his firm, MZM Inc., that included an attempt to bribe a Pentagon official. ... [More articles on Wade]
Poway contractor guilty of bribing Cunningham (Brent Wilkes)
In addition to Wilkes and Cunningham, the investigation into the bribery ---- spawned by a newspaper story in 2005 ---- netted charges against three other men: two men, including [Mitchell] Wade, who pleaded guilty to a role in bribing the politician, and another man who still faces trial.
Feds call for 60-year sentence for Wilkes (defense contractor bribed Randy “Duke” Cunningham)
Gaming the system. Everything about the ‘Reform Institute’ stinks. And they have their paws in just about everything.
A SPECIAL FReeper THANK YOU to calcowgirl for all her hard work here.
Her investigative work substantiates what I have suspected all along....both the left and the right are corrupt as hell...and America is clueless.
Washington “insiders” are not motivated by allegiance to America but to a darker and more sinister agenda.
I meant to ping you to the above.
BTTT
Why am I not surprised? I'd wager to bet that most of these people are on the receiving end.....
whoa! good post. Thanks for the info.
Robert W. Kelly is a Founder and Managing Partner of CenTauri. Prior to CenTauri, Mr. Kelly served as Vice President and General Counsel for Gray Hawk Systems Inc. and its successor ManTech-Gray Hawk.
Following up on the above post about the Reform Institute's Robert Kelly and Gray Hawk's connections with the tainted MZM (Duke Cunningham bribes), now I find that the new merged company, ManTech, for which Kelly acts as General Counsel, is directly connected to the the recently indicted Rick Renzi. From Wikipedia:
Father's company[Rick] Renzi has been criticized for consistently introducing and voting in favor of bills benefiting his father's defense company, ManTech International Corp., a Fairfax, Virginia-based defense contractor.[37] Until his death in February of 2008, Renzi’s father, Retired Major General Eugene Renzi, was an executive vice president of the firm. ManTech had $467 million in contracts at the Army's Fort Huachuca with options for an additional $1.1 billion between 2004 through 2008. In addition, the company, which has an office in Sierra Vista, Arizona, was the largest contributor to Renzi’s 2002 congressional campaign and the second largest in his 2004 campaign.
September 17, 2005
John McCain Gets Soros Cash
Moonbat.com has revealed a fascinating web of relationships underlying John McCain’s activities.
Senator John McCain’s Reform Institute has suffered some bad press recently due to its involvement in an influence—peddling scandal with Cablevision. As usual, however, mainstream media have failed to go to the root of the matter.
Founded on June 26, 2001, McCain’s Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues has long served as a nerve center for the so—called “campaign finance reform”movement — a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights.
Now here’s the kicker. The list of donors published on the Reform Institute’s Web site reads like a veritable Who’s Who of radical, leftwing foundations, including the Tides Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Proteus Fund and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. (hat tip, Winfield Myers)
Not surprisingly, in view of the above associations, Arianna Huffington serves on the Reform Institute’s Advisory Board. Huffington has long acted as a front for George Soros’ “campaign finance reform” efforts. In 2000, she organized the so—called Shadow Conventions which provided John McCain with a bully pulpit to stump for his now—infamous McCain—Feingold Act. George Soros shouldered about one third of the cost of the Shadow Conventions
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2005/09/john_mccain_gets_soros_cash.html