AP: Water Deal Illuminates Secret Contracts (Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes)

[cascadiance]

Well, it looks like some of the details of what Foggo and Wilkes have been investigated for are starting to come out now, presumably right before they get indicted here in San Diego when Carol Lam leaves the Attorney's office next week! Sounds like a case where Foggo steered a lot of the business contracts over to Wilkes' and other cronies' companies. You know, the script for "Iraq For Sale" and "Iraq's Lost Billions" all over again!

From:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020600847.html

Water Deal Illuminates Secret Contracts

By KATHERINE SHRADER and ALLISON HOFFMAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; 2:23 PM



WASHINGTON -- CIA officers operating in northern Iraq bought drinking water from a bottling plant there for years prior to the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

That changed soon afterward. A CIA officer handling logistics for the Middle East and other regions recommended that an American company provide water and other supplies, according to former government officials.

The U.S. contractor that benefited from the multimillion-dollar deal wasn't just anyone. The company had personal ties to the officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who would soon leave his logistics post in Frankfurt, Germany, and move to Washington to become the CIA's third-ranking official.

In at least one written communication, a Baghdad CIA officer complained about the no-bid contract. According to one official, the officer believed the deal was simply unnecessary because safe water was available commercially but he was ignored.

The water contract, while small on the scale of the billions that flowed into Iraq, raises questions about why U.S. taxpayer dollars went to well-connected businessmen rather than Iraqis who could have benefited from a share of postwar reconstruction business. And the case provides a window into the murky world of covert government business arrangements.

Foggo retired from the CIA last year. He is now at the center of a federal investigation, nearing completion, into whether he improperly steered contracts to companies controlled by his best friend, San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes.

...

[fooj]

1. Yes!!!!!

Thanks for posting this! :thumbsup:

[redqueen]

2. K&R

I hope this catches on... if reconstruction money had gone to Iraqis, imagine how much different things might be.

[MADem]

3. This should be on the front page--this IS huge. NT

[cascadiance]

4. Yup, it looks HUGH!

:)

[Morgana LaFey]

5. Here's what I suspect

(without reading the article) -- The U.S. CIA-connected firm got the no-bid contract so it could funnel some money (or a lot of money) back to the CIA's blackops, off-book funding. You know, like the drug trade.

This was bsically the scheme Abramoff & Cunningham and so many others were involved in, only the principals and beneficiaries ere a little different, it too had taxpayer money funding it: Congress passed laws mandating certain types of contracts be let to certain vendors and those vendors put some of their ill-gotten gains back into REPUBLICAN coffers. So taxpayers were funding the Republican party.

[cascadiance]

6. I wonder if these "spigots" getting cut off has something to do with Wilkes' financial troubles!

He's reportedly in debt up to the hilt. I wonder if like you said, he'd already been funnelling some of this money to black ops units, etc. and subsequently if those contracts were cut off from him, that he's now in a world of hurt.

A while back I saw an article on a German site (that DU wouldn't allow me to link to due to some concerns about anti-semiticness or something like that) that had a translation of an article in a German paper that contended that the counterfit money (the "super dollars") that lead to us getting newer money replacing the older $20 and other bills, was in fact made by the CIA instead of North Korea as alleged to also fund these black ops.

[cascadiance]

7. Here's another article that links the Reagan administration in too...

A new article now shows a history of the Reagan administrator also "outing" U.S. Attorneys that have tried to go after folks linked to the CIA (like Foggo is now).

The comment at the bottom of this article by an unnamed senior justice official is priceless:

"If you say there's an innocent reason for the change in San Diego," he says, "I have a bridge to sell in Brooklyn."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070206/6usattorney.htm

Congress Probes Departures of U.S. Attorneys

By Chitra Ragavan

Posted 2/6/07

The departure of nearly a dozen U.S. attorneys–including some overseeing high-profile politically charged criminal investigations–has sparked congressional inquiries as to whether the Justice Department is politicizing the hiring and firing of federal prosecutors. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty was in the hot seat today answering just that very question before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One of the U.S. attorney departures that is raising the most eyebrows is that of Carol Lam, who has been overseeing the massive federal corruption probe of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham. The eight-term Republican congressman is currently serving a long prison term for accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for inserting lucrative "earmarks" into defense appropriations and intelligence appropriations budgets on behalf of two defense contractors, including a San Diego-based contractor named Brent Wilkes and two unindicted co-conspirators.

...

To some veteran former Justice Department officials, the departure of Lam before the Cunningham probe is completed harks back to a similar case involving a CIA asset more than 25 years ago, in which the U.S. attorney was fired because of pressure from the agency. In 1982, the feds arrested the former chief of the Federal Security Directorate (Mexico's secret police), Miguel Nazar Haro, after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego for his involvement in an $8 million car-theft ring that had smuggled about 600 stolen American luxury cars and vans from Southern California to Mexico.

The U.S. attorney in San Diego, William Kennedy, had uncovered the car-theft ring and pushed the Justice Department to indict Haro. Kennedy charged that the CIA was blocking the indictment because Haro was a CIA asset in Mexico City and that the Justice Department was dragging its feet. Kennedy was reprimanded in no uncertain terms–President Ronald Reagan fired the prosecutor, a former Justice official says, after the CIA brought pressure to bear. But Haro–who was forced to resign as the secret police chief because of the car-smuggling allegations– was subsequently indicted and arrested. He posted $200,000 bail and fled, becoming a fugitive. And so he remained, until he was again arrested in February 2004, this time on charges that he had kidnapped a leftist leader nearly three decades earlier during Mexico's "dirty war," against the left.

...

[Judi Lynn]

8. Gee. what compelled these reporters to get out there and investigate this story?

It's almost a miracle we are learning this much!

Very, very refreshing actually reading a news story! It'll be interesting seeing how the story is received.

[cascadiance]

9. They probably know that if they have a scoop, the time is now to get it out!

Since any day now, the indictments of these two jerks is about to be given, with Carol Lam leaving the Attorney's office here next week on the 15th, and then it will be a press announcement instead of a scoop.

[Nitrogenica]

10. Water Deal Exposes Secret Iraq Contracts

"The water contract, while small on the scale of the billions that flowed into Iraq, raises questions about why U.S. taxpayer dollars went to well-connected businessmen rather than Iraqis who could have benefited from a share of postwar reconstruction business. And the case provides a window into the murky world of covert government business arrangements."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/02/06/national/w112205S50.DTL&type=politics

[acmavm]

11. LIKE THIS IS NEWS? WHO DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT THESE

The probe of Foggo and Wilkes stems from a broader federal investigation involving at least five federal agencies into how associates of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham directed government business to a favored network of national security contractors. Cunningham, a San Diego Republican elected to eight terms in Congress, is currently serving more than eight years in jail for taking at least $2.4 million in bribes. Another defense contractor has pleaded guilty to paying some of them.


SHENNANIGANS...

<SNIP>

In June 2002, Wilkes created a government contractor called Archer Defense Technologies, which was registered to the address of his flagship, Wilkes Corp., in Poway, Calif. The company also used the name Liberty Defense Technologies. At the beginning of 2004, his nephew and apprentice, Joel Combs, formed a new company called Archer Logistics, run out of a small Virginia office.


Despite the short history of Wilkes' company, Foggo recommended that the CIA buy water from it, current and former officials said. He was a supervising officer at the CIA supply hub in Germany, and the purchasing officer there went along.


Foggo didn't tell the purchasing officer about his personal ties to Combs or Wilkes, a government official says. With CIA officers literally under fire and other large issues to deal with, the CIA station didn't put up a fight, former officials say.

[Nitrogenica]

12. This and a laundy list of troubling facts have been talked about for years here,

however, soon everyone else will be talking about this.

Truth is a stubborn thing, it just takes time for truth to rise to the surface when it is being whitewashed by a corrupt administration who is tied to a MSM that benefits from that whitewashing.

[Miss Chybil]

13. Naomi Klein - "Baghdad Year Zero" - Sept. 24, 2004

Like this is "news."

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

[SpiralHawk]

16. This republicon crony deal smells soooo fishy

Why do republicons steal from US taxpayers?

[Blue_Tires]

14. k+r

[saigon68]

15. Disgusting isn't it.