Crooked Contractor's Ties Reached DOE
EXCLUSIVE: Crooked Contractor's Ties Extended to Energy Dept.
By Justin Rood - March 16, 2006, 4:00 PM
We've known for a while that Mitchell Wade's bribery scheme won him contracts with the Pentagon.
But now we've discovered that Wade's company, MZM Inc., had at least one contract with an intelligence office inside the Department of Energy, according to a document obtained by TPMmuckraker.com.
Wade pleaded guilty two weeks ago to several felony counts of bribery and conspiracy. He was a key player in the corruption scandal of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), who took $2.4 million from contractors, MZM's Wade foremost among them, in exchange for government contracts.
To date, MZM's involvement with the Energy Department has not been reported.
But an invoice we obtained shows MZM performed "support services" to the agency's Office of Counterintelligence.
The document, an invoice for 13 hours of work performed during January 2004, was for $2,355. Written on the invoice are the words, "Principal systems architect."
We could not determine the total value or length of MZM's contract with the Energy Department. The agency did not return calls for comment.
It gets better...:
Here's what we know: After the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon used its massive budget and urgent sense of mission to push into areas of intelligence it had once left to others. Domestic intelligence was one of those areas. DoD created CIFA in 2002 to become a joint center for "force protection" intelligence work at DoD, mainly anti-terrorism.
What's "force protection?" Pentagonese for "carte blanche." In encompasses protection for bases, troops and equipment. And the water supply. The electrical grid. Highways. Contractors, their suppliers -- the list goes on. Which leaves CIFA with a mandate to gather information on, well, just about anything and anybody it wants.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000114.php