Posted on 08/14/2009 10:41:54 AM PDT by markomalley
A defense contractor with longtime ties to Rep. John Murtha said Thursday the Navy is lifting a suspension that has kept it from getting new government work.
An agreement between Kuchera Defense Systems of Windber, Pa., and the Navy comes amid a Justice Department criminal investigation that appears to be intensifying.
Dennis McGlynn, an attorney representing Kuchera, says the firm was removed from the Excluded Parties List System, a black book of contractors blocked from government work.
McGlynn says Kuchera made some accounting adjustments to satisfy the Navy.
"We are very pleased to be back in business as far as getting new business," he said.
Kuchera is caught up in a criminal investigation that became public when FBI agents raided the facility early this year.
The investigation focuses on the campaign donations from defense contractors that have fueled the process of congressional earmarks — specific projects that lawmakers direct to particular contractors — for many decades.
Over the past decade, Murtha has steered millions of dollars in congressional earmarks to the company from the Pennsylvania Democrat's chairmanship of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
Also enmeshed in the probe is the founder of a once-prominent Washington-area lobbying firm that specialized in getting earmarks for defense contractors from Murtha and other House appropriators.
The most ominous development for members of Congress and defense contractors under scrutiny in the probe is the cooperation that two government witnesses recently began providing federal prosecutors.
One of them, Richard Ianieri, worked closely with one of the owners of the Kuchera company and with a lobbying firm that once employed Murtha's brother and that still employs a former Murtha aide.
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And Dodd wad innocent on the VIP Countrywide loan......yeah......sure. GANGSTERS
Murtha is like a great big sack of teflon coated jello. Even under Bush he couldn’t be touched. So, why am I not surprised?
I'm no longer certain that the people in his congressional district can give him the boot. I think it depends on who counts the votes, and I suspect the counters are all "friends of Big John."
Murtha is 77, and before too much longer he is going to be called to that big Quorum Call in the sky. Johnstown, PA will then dry up and blow away ten minutes after he’s gone (since there is not a single job in a 20 mile radius that does not depend on his porky largesse)
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