The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever! Phony Front Companies Cycle Millions to GOP!
The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever! Phony Front Companies Cycle Millions to GOP! House Staffer, DELAY
by Sherlock Google
Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 08:48:20 AM PDT
Brent Wilkes & Mitchell Wade - Bagmen in the Successful Plot to Take Over the United States and Enrich GOP Officeholders
The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you.
Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?
And what did the Dukester do to get his Rolls-Royce, anyway? Whose Lear Jet was he flying around in?
* Sherlock Google's diary :: ::
*
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes. The War on Terra is on!
Even more money for you and the GOP then.
It's a simple plan--one even the average American can understand.
Here's how Wilkes and Wade, with the help of the Culture of Corruption, made all of themselves wealthy with taxpayer money.
Here's Wilkes former life as a CIA financier of black bag operations to introduce him, from Cannonfire:
Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those "outside" businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:
Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen -- including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization - to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.
WFC still exists: http://www.downtownaugusta.com/...
ADCS, the company Wilkes headquartered in Poway, was founded on software designed by a German firm called VPMax. I think we should see VPMax's role in this as analogous to that of the Romanian concern which provided those wool uniforms to Saddam Hussein. As I suggested earlier, Wilkes empire is largely a collection of false fronts built on a small foundation of "real" products, usually taken from other, smaller players.
And from there, we enter the current scandal. About which, more to come soon.
Now Cannonfire on the current scandal:
Wilkes' firms received millions of taxpayer dollars; Daniel Hopsicker puts the amount at $700 million, although mainstream journalists speak of a much lower figure. Regardless of the amount, sources agree that the Defense Department did not really like or need his document conversion services. And Wilkes' list of companies included obvious fakes.
Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes -- a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128,
That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is www.mirrorlabs.com.
That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.
However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.
A background check on www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes' fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)
I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money? Here is the organization that really has -- or had -- offices at that address: ADCS PAC! That's where the money went.
Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.
So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?
Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.
All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.
The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other "subsidiaries" were also used as funding mechanisms.
By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?
Other recipients of Wilkes' largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole...
And then there's Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections.
Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you're missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself -- using "false fronts" to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials.
Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
While I believe that the Wilkes Corporation (also known as ADCS and Group W Advisors) intended to hire enough people to give his firm a more convincing veneer of legitimacy, the available evidence indicates that Wilkes' company existed primarily as a way-station for political pay-offs.
Remember the go-go days of the internet? Remember when a snazzy web page could make a tiny, under-financed company appear to be a massive conglomerate -- even when the firm conducted little actual business?
Update that scenario to the post-9/11 era, and you have the Wilkes corporation. Apparently, they did provide the military with document services -- which means, basically, that they scanned a lot of hard-copy pages that had been yellowing in file drawers. For example -- and this may be the only example -- ADCS worked on a project involving digitizing documents related to the building of the Panama Canal.
...
Is the Pentagon truly willing to pay three-quarters of a billion dollars to anyone who wants to run some old docs through a scanner? I know quite a few people who would volunteer to take that gig...
I still have yet to discover any evidence that the other "defense-related" enterprises operating under the Wilkes umbrella were genuine businesses. "Group W Media," the advertising agency with no discernable clients, was a front for something -- I don't yet know what. "Group W Transportation" amounted to a time-share arrangement involving a Lear jet. "Al Dust Properties" and "Group W Holdings" supposedly owned properties -- but I can't trace any holdings beyond the impressive building which the Wilkes Corporation called home. (It's now up for auction, by the way.) MailSafe Inc. supposedly offers "mail decontamination, digital capture, and electronic distribution to government and commercial entities." But the web site has disappeared, and the company seems to have left zero imprint on corporate America. Where is the evidence that it actually provided any services to clients?
"PerfectWave Technologies" has (or had) what seems, at first, to be an impressive web page advertising speech recognition devices for the military. (That page is really little more than a ghost, since the official Wilkes Corp. site no longer points to it.) Look closer: The site does not specify any PerfectWave products. Neither do we encounter any named personnel or development teams. No order information. If this company makes battlefield-ready high-tech equipment, why doesn't the the web site mention any departments, managers or employees? All we get is a single phone number and a fax number. Now conduct a Google search: Aside from channeling funds to politicians, PerfectWave hasn't done anything to warrant a mention.
"Pure Aqua Technologies" another Wilkes operation, seems to be pure snake oil. No address, no telephone number, no nothing -- except this stupid web page, which is a joke.
This from a Kossak, LieparDestin:
And thats when things start to get interesting for me. Take a look at the Group W Media site again. For an advertising firm, thats like... no substance. No nothing. Just a single phone number and a mysterious login form.
Then take a look at another site owned by Wilkes, this time a company by the name of Archer Logistics. Noting any similarities? A little substance, a smokescreen mostly. No employee names, ceo names, nothing.
On to Acoustical Communication Systems. A bit more substance to this company on first glance, but after a mere look around you'll notice its all filler. No news, no employee names, no nothing. A Google or two will turn up that this and other companies listed, apparently never did anything of substance at all. Notice the address of 13970 Stowe Drive
Poway, CA 92064, the same as that Group W Media and ADCS.
How about Liberty Defense Tech.
AkamaiInfo Tech thanks to archive.org is a bit interesting merely for the fact that the name is so similar to that of Akamai Tech, who's CEO was on one of the flights that crashed into the WTC.
Now my favorite so far is PerfectWave Technologies Look at that site! Fancy Smancy, at first glance you think you have something. Second glance even. But try one more time, notice the address: LOCATION
13970 Stowe Drive, Poway, CA 92064. Notice the lack ways to contact them. Lack of employee information or any media releases, etc. Google and Yahoo turn up nothing from this company except donations to the GOP. All these high-level companies, all in this 11 million dollar building , but at the same time this article says that only 100 people work at the building. But anyhow, more on PerfectWave. Political Money Line has these contributions listed:
Gelwix, Max D
5/12/2004 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
RELY ON YOUR BELIEFS FUND
2 . Gelwix, Max D
9/26/2003 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
FUTURE LEADERS PAC
3 . Gelwix, Max D.
6/9/2004 $2,500.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave Technoligies/President [Contribution]
REFORM PAC
4 . Gelwix, Max D.
8/14/2003 $5,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
AMERICANS FOR A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
5 . GELWIX, MAX P MR.
6/26/2003 $2,000.00
POWAY, CA 92064
PERFECT WAVE/COO [Contribution]
BUSH-CHENEY '04 (PRIMARY) INC
Try using the same site to search for ADCS, Wilkes (Brent and Regina), MZM etc.
Now I dont know if Im misinterpreting all this but to me it looks like: Wilkes and Co payoff Cunningham to get them DOD contracts. Wilkes and Co (guessing) subcontract these to whomever it is they subcontract them to, and skim a load off the top, funneling it into dummy business's to turn around and donate it to the GOP & GOP related causes.
Oh almost forgot the oddest for last The Poway Mafia. Another site owned by Wilkes. Definately creepy.
Most of Wilkes Companies, when you go into those sites above, HAVE THE SAME ADDRESS AND EVEN HAVE THE SAME FAX NUMBER: 858-848-0400!! They are obviously fake fronts for laundering taxpayer money into GOP TV ads.
Now Mitchell Wade, from Cannonfire:
unlike Wilkes, kept the MZM Pac housed in the very same office. (We must presume that they didn't have a great deal of office space, since unrelated tenants are in the same building.) When we look at the data on MZM Pac and its activities in 2003-2004, we learn that the population of this company has grown by leaps and bounds.
The PAC now lists roughly 100 names. A close scan of the names indicates that wives and children were recruited to the cause -- the cause being, of course, donations to G.O.P. candidates. (One of the named donors is "Joe Dollar." That can't be real -- can it?) Nearly all the donors are listed as employees of MZM Inc., and many have grandiose titles -- Chairman of this, VP of that. MZM employees, we learn, were told they had to make the donations or be fired. I believe there are laws against that sort of thing.
Frankly, I'm not at all sure how MZM transformed itself from a two-man law office into a go-go defense and intelligence firm.
For that, it would seem, is the final incarnation of MZM. According to the Center for Public Integrity
MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company's Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.
In addition to its D.C. headquarters, MZM has field offices in Miami, Tampa, San Antonio, San Diego and Suffolk, Va. The company employs about 70 people.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has "come out of a flat period" with defense industry contracts.
In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.
In November 2002, MZM opened a computer center in Charlottesville, Va., to house classified engineering intelligence in a digital mapping and architecture analysis system. Twelve employees in that office are developing the program for the Pentagon. It is designed to provide digital maps of thousands of buildings worldwide. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the mapping system will help soldiers and planners know details of buildings -- even which way doors open and close.
At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. The data page goes on to name a number of individuals involved with this work -- intelligence analysts, generals, the kind of people whom we would expect to be involved with such an enterprise. Cornelison seems to have disappeared.
But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL -- www.mzinc.com -- is blank, as is Google's cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
Update [2005-12-10 12:47:8 by Sherlock Google]: Found out more about MZM being investigated for intelligence work for the agency that cooked the aluminum tubes story, used as an excuse to invade Iraq. From the Washington Post:
The NGIC is a critical Army intelligence center with a staff of 900, three-quarters of whom are civilian scientists, engineers and intelligence analysts. The other one-quarter are active military.
Most NGIC employees work at a relatively new facility near Charlottesville, where they produce the Army's primary intelligence analyses of foreign armies, their force structures and capabilities. Others conduct scientific and technical studies on foreign weapons and technologies.
The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq's weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.
The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for "gross failure" in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was "completely wrong" when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket motor cases.
That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters June 29 that his office would conduct its own inquiry into the Silberman-Robb finding.
When Parker, the center spokeswoman, was asked last week about Rich, his son and NGIC personnel going to work for MZM or MZM employees working at the NGIC, she said in a statement that "due to the ongoing investigation on MZM, we must refer all questions concerning MZM, its employees and activities" to the Justice Department.
The MZM investigation is being carried out by the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney's offices in the District of Columbia and San Diego, according to one law enforcement official. That official would not say where the intelligence center may fit in.
MZM Involvement in Aluminum Tubes LIE!
Update [2005-12-10 16:54:41 by Sherlock Google]: Found by Rockmoonwater downthread, here is a look at the Group W/Perfect Wave Lobbying Report in which they report less than $10,000 income for Group W. Looks fishy, less than $10,000. Also shows how they split everything up at Group W to no doubt avoid certain disclosure.
Group W Lobby Reports and Registrations
These Wilkes and MZM companies were mostly frauds, bull, a sham, counterfeit, simulated, false. They were fronts to collect quid pro quo contracts from fellow GOP wingnuts.
The taxpayer money went straight from the US Treasury to the Wilkes and MZM PACS and from there cycled back to the GOP campaigns and the GOP K Street Cartel.
All the while, DoD never asked for these contracts and even complained about ADCS and was ignored!
Kudos to LieparDestin on this one, whose diary scrolled off before we could realize what Cannonfire and this John Dean fellow had uncovered.
Oh and RECOMMEND like you've never recommended before. Read it out loud to your family and friends for fun and enjoyment. Send the link to blogs, lists, etc. We need a Blog Swarm!
Update [2005-12-11 17:14:40 by Sherlock Google]: A house staffer, Eric Massa, said this is what is going on and explained further when asked if the phony front companies were true: "This has been going on since "K Street"
Yep, the scam works just the way that the San Diego union has been reporting it in the Cunningham case. First, a member of Congress slips a "member add" into the budget (wether appropriations or authorization) and then once that money comes through for the company - the pay offs begin. It has now been laid bare by Cunningham and I suspect that there will be others involved. The interesting point is that this will be a Republican issue in that they control both Houses of Congress and therefore have total and complete control over the budget process. In fact, the Republican leadership under Delay have told companies that if the talk to Members on both the sides of the isle then they cannot request anything from the Republicans - and since they are calling the shots 100% of the time in the budget process then they write out any company that even talks to a Democrat. It's all very public and very out there and will only be more so now that Cunningham has admitted to the entire scam. Stand by for more from that case
Massa added another comment that Rumsfeld could be taken down too by all this.
Rumsfeld is Fungible
Update [2005-12-11 19:12:36 by Sherlock Google]: Delay got Wilkes' money:
Cunningham case casts new light on donations
Tags: Brent Wilkes, Tom DeLay, Group W, Poway Mafia, Duke Cunningham, John Doolittle (all tags)
Permalink | 389 comments
Comments: Expand Shrink Hide (Always) | Indented Flat (Always)
Daily Kos Help
*
Sherlock Tip Jar! (4.00 / 301)
Raking Muck is "HARD WORK"!
by Sherlock Google on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 08:49:00 AM PDT
o
Good work. But it isn't exactly "news" (4.00 / 21)
back in 1972, the GOP was doing and had been doing - exactly the same thing for a long time. And using the threat of having to comply with environmental cleanup regulations if the Democrats got power, to seduce over formerly-D big businessmen to the Dark Side:
(From my blog, a post on Dec 1. $750,000 is over $3 million in today's dollars.)
Since his return from Miami, Bernstein had become obsessed with the $89,000 in Mexican checks that had passed through Bernard Barker's bank account. Why Mexico? According to the GAO investigator, Maurice Stans had said the money had originally come from Texas. But no one at the GAO had been able to understand why $89,000 in campaign contributions were routed through Mexico.
In mid-August, Bernstein had begun calling all the employees of the Texas Comittee for the Re-election of the President. [P@L - aka CRP] A secretary at the committee's offices in Houston said that the FBI had been there to inteview Emmett Moore, the committee treasurer.
"They questioned me about how money was transferred to Mexico," Moore said. "They said there had been allegations to that effect - that money was transferred to and from Mexico."
Moore immediately sought to make clear to Bernstein that the FBI agents were not interested in his own actions, but in those of the Texas committee's chairman, Robert H. Allen, who was also president of the Gulf Resources and Chemical Co. of Houston. The agents had expressed particular interest in Allen's relationship with a Mexico City lawyer, Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, who represented Gulf Resources' interests in Mexico.
The Mexican connection. What did it mean?
Moore, who said he had been as unnerved by the FBI's visit as by Bernstein's call, knew nothing of the reasons for moving money across the border.
Bernstein began leaving messages for Robert Allen on his home and office. They were not answered. Finally, on the morning that Maurice Stans summoned the GAO's auditor to Miami, Bernstein got up at 6:00 a.m. - 5:00 a.m. in Texas - and called Allen at his Houston home. Allen sleepily declined to discuss the matter, "because it's before the grand jury."
Using his primitive high-school Spanish, Bernstein intensified his search for Ogarrio and for any information on the elusive Mexican lawyer. Gradually, the enterprise became the object of good-natured office ridicule. Bernstein was unable to construct anything other than disjointed school-book phrases in the present tense. Ken Ringle, a reporter on the Virginia staff who sat next to Bernstein, would shout, "Bernstein's talking Spanish again," and reporters and editors would walk over to offer appropriate commentary. The calls went to bankers, relatives of Ogarrio, his former law partners, his clients, Mexican banking commisioners, the police, law schools. Nada. The standing office joke had it that Bernstein heard the whole Watergate story and didn't understand it.
Not surprisingly, the Nixon campaign's Mexican connection was uncovered in English.
On August 24, Bernstein called Martin Dardis in Miami. The chief investigator said he was coming up with pretty good information on the Mexican checks, really weird stuff that he didn't want to talk about on the telephone. Dardis assured Bernstein that it would be worth his while to fly down to Miami again...
...Bernstein asked him what he had learned about the Mexican checks.
"It's called 'laundering,'" Dardis began. "You set up a money chain that makes it impossible to trace the source. The Mafia does it all the time. So does Nixon, or at least that's what this guy who's the lawyer for Robert Allen says. This guy says that Stans set up the whole thing. It was Stans' idea. He says they were doing it elsewhere too, that Stans didn't want any way they could trace where the money was coming from."
Dardis said he had learned the whole story from Richard Haynes, a Texas lawyer who represented Allen. Haynes had outlined the Mexican laundry operation to Dardis this way:
Shortly before April 7, the effective date of the new campaign finance law, and the last day anonymous contributions could be legally accepted, Stans had gone on a final fund-raising swing across the Southwest. If Democrats were reluctant to contribute to a Republican presidential candidate, Stans assured them that their anonymity could be absolutely assured, if necessary by moving their contributions thorugh a Mexican middleman whose bank records were not subject to subpoena by U.S. bank investigators. The protection would also allow CRP to recieve donations from corporations, which were forbidden by campaign laws to contribute to political candidates; from business executives and labor leaders having difficulties with government regulatory agencies; and from special-interest groups and such underground sources of income as the big Las Vegas gambling casinos and mob-dominated unions. To guarantee anonymity, the "gifts," whether checks, security notes or stock certificates, would be taken across the border to Mexico, converted to cash in Mexico City through deposit in a bank account established by a Mexican national with no known ties to the Nixon campaign, and only then sent on to Washington. The only record would be jealously guarded in Washington by Stans.
From Houston, Haynes confirmed the operation to Bernstein. An operator familiar with the rough-and-tumble of Texas politics, Haynes spoke in the breezy, swashbuckling style that had earned him the nickname "Racehorse" in courthouses from Dallas to Austin.
"Shit, Stans has been running this operation for years with Nixon," he said. "Nothing really wrong with it. That's how you give your tithe."
Robert Allen, the head of the Nixon campaign organization in Texas, was merely the conduit for the funds moving to Mexico, including the $89,000 that had gone into Barker's bank account, Haynes said. Ogarrio was the money-changer, converting the checks and notes given him by Allen into American dollars, both in cash and in dollar drafts drawn on his account at the Banco Internacional.
Haynes estimated that $750,000 raised by Stans and his two principal fund-raisers in Texas had moved through Mexico in the final weeks of the pre-April 7 campaign.
"Maury came through here like a goddamned train," said Haynes, "he was really ballin' the jack. He'd say to the Democrats, the big money men who'd never gone for a Republican before, 'You know we got this crazy man Ruckelshaus* back east who'd just as soon close your factory as let the smokestack belch. He's a hard man to control and he's not the only one like that in Washington. People need a place to go to, to cut through the red tape when you've got a guy like that on the loose. Now, don't misunderstand; we're not making any promises, all we can do is make ourselves accessible..."
* William D. Ruckelshaus, then head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the message was indelible, said Haynes. "Maury's a right high-type fellow; he would never actually threaten any of those guys. Then he'd do his Mexican hat dance, tell them there'd be no danger of the Democrats or their company's competitors finding out about the contributing, it would all get lost in Mexico...If a guy pleaded broke, Maury would get him to turn over stock in his company or some other stock. He was talking 10 percent, saying it was worth 10 percent of some big businessman's income to keep Richard Nixon in Washington and be able to stay in touch."
That was Saturday, August 26, three days after the President had been nominated. In Washington, Woodward had just received the gAO report, finally released for Sunday's papers. It listed 11 "aparent and possible violations" of the new law and referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. It also stated that Stans maintained a secret slush fund of cash in his office totalling at least $350,000. At one time the fund included the cash that had come from the $25,000 Dalhberg check and the four Mexican checks totalling $89,000.
Woodward wrote the top portion of a story from the GAO report. From Miami, Bernstein dictated an account of the Mexican laundry and Haynes' estimate that not $89,000 but $750,000 had been washed across the border.
After several lengthy conversations, Bernstein and Woodward decided not to refer to Stans' other fundraising tactics that Haynes had described. Both were wary of the lawyer's language. Hayne's description of the "Stans shakedown cruise" as he called it, was filed for further investigation. The GAO investigator confirmed the subtance of the Mexican laundry operation to Woodward.
Three days later, Tuesday, August 29, the President scheduled a press conference at his oceanside home in San Clemente, California. Reporters waited under large palm and eucalyptus trees on a sunny morning.
"With regard to the matter of the handling of campaign funds," the President said, "we have a new law here in which technical violations have occurred and are occurring, apparently on both sides."
What are the Democrats' violations? a reporter asked.
"I think that will come out in the balance of this week. I will let the political people talk about that, but I understand that there have been [violations] on both sides," Nixon remarked calmly.
Stans, the President said, is "an honest man and one who is very meticulous." In fact, Stans was investigating the matter, the President said, "very, very thoroughly, because he doesn't want any evidence at all to be outstanding, indicating that we have not complied with the law."
The President rejected suggestions that a special prosecutor, independent of the Justice Department, be appointed, and disclosed that his counsel, John W. Dean III, had conducted a Watergate investigation: "I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous peole in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.*
Woodward, in Washington, wrote a story from the transcript of the press conference, and listed some of the people under investigation who, as the President had been so careful to point out, were not "presently employed" in the administration: Hunt, Liddy, Stans, Sloan and Mitchell.
*John Osborne, the highly respected Nixon watcher for the New Republic, wrote, a week later: "The thing I'll always remember about Mr. Nixon's first 'political press conference' of 1972 was his handling of the funds and bugging matter and our failure to handle him as a vulnerable candidate should be handled. It was a lesson in the msemerizing power of the presidency."
--from Chapter 3, All The President's Men, ©1974 Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward. All transcription errors mine.
Many of the people involved went on to remain respected community leaders - I found one of them was getting a building at Texas A&M named after him, the Mexican lawyer's company is involved in a case with big multi-nationals in Europe, all of these people go on on, plutocrats and their trusted minions, while like in the days of Jean Valjean, steal $10 bucks and you're a criminal who deserves death according to Scalito...
"Don't be a janitor on the Death Star!" - Grey Lady Bast (change @ for AT to email)
by bellatrys on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:01:57 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
+
Agreed. (4.00 / 12)
And, I've been stating this simple rule on the neo-con Rethug war machine:
U.S. Taxpayer => Treasury => Iraq Defense Contractors => Republicans.
CONCLUSION:
Any Dem who is supporting Iraq is authorizing the continued financing of Republican causes for the next 50 years.
by maxschell on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:10:58 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
#
Gotta watch those purchasing agents! n/t (none / 1)
Without the Israeli press, the world would be a little darker. -7.00, -2.92
by mattes on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:16:48 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
*
Indeed. (4.00 / 4)
I should also add a clarification to my "agree": yes this problem has been around along time, but Dems used to profit almost as much as Rethugs. That has changed...dramatically and thank you to Sherlock Google for highlighting this.
The more light that is cast on this the better...well done Sherlock Google.
by maxschell on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:32:18 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
o
I noticed that very clearly (4.00 / 7)
when I was building my "Matrix" last year, there was more than just the buying of idea-mongers and meme-manufacturers going on - the fact that looking at the amounts of money donated via Open Secrets and Buy Blue by big business to both Republican and Democratic pols and parties, you could see an extreme disproportion. some of which you could attribute to the fact that the GOP is currently in the WH, but not all of it.
But the fact remains - that a) yes, Democrats on the whole are just as in hock to the Big Money Devil as Republicans, even if they did get cheated on the whole (I can imagine a whole skit of Politicians in Hell, built around the idea of the Damned kvetching as they wait outside Lucifer's Sulphury Gates, and finding out how much or how little each one went for) and b) this is always the problem with democracy, and the fate of republics - that how do you stop corruption, when the enforcement of anti-corruption laws depends on the people who enforce them not being bought out by those who stand to suffer by them?
And also, the "See, the Democrats do it too!" is an old, old tactic of the Nixonians - and again, it was partly valid. The Devil lies with half-truths in the old stories; in this case, the Republicans get away with murder by pointing out that their opponents have been wielding the brass knuckles too...
"Don't be a janitor on the Death Star!" - Grey Lady Bast (change @ for AT to email)
by bellatrys on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 11:03:41 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
#
Exactly! (4.00 / 5)
U.S. Taxpayer => Treasury => Iraq Defense Contractors => Republicans.
My mother coined the phrase "lying looters" to refer to this administration, and not all of it is as blatant as this story or necessarily even illegal. First send large amounts of money to organizations managed by people whose politics are in line with those of the Party for services delivered or not, often called "consulting" if it's not clear that the recipients are actually doing anything for the public. These people notice they get big government contracts and get rich when the Party is in power and the Party sometimes explicitly tells them the other party will take away their gravy train, so they donate to the Party to keep it in power. Some will hit the legal limit in donations and lean on their family, friends, work associates, congregations, etc to send more. When you're throwing around billions of dollars, even a fraction of a percent of it going back to the Party is a huge advantage over the competition. You don't even need a spoken conspiracy, although I'm certain this administration is rife with them.
Now look at this administration's use of private businesses for all sorts of things that used to be done internally within the government, under the guise of competition and efficiency but often ending up costing more than it used to. Look at the K Street Project, threatening lobbyists who used to donate to both parties to only donate to Republicans or else their bills won't pass. Look at the faith-based initiative to funnel money into churches explicitly to use for spreading their faith and with financial oversight removed. The Bush Administration is creating a significant class of upper-middle income earners who are dependant on the Republican Party for their livelihood and have the desire and financial means to keep it strong. For all the Republican whining about government workers' unions all voting Democratic (stop trying to cut their wages then), this is bigger.
Quick history lesson: After the revolution, all the banks in New York were owned by Federalists who refused to give loans to Republicans. Aaron Burr, who played both sides but had Republican sympathies, created the Bank of Manhattan to break this partisan hold on capital and finance his own political movement. The Burrite political movement later became known as Tammany Hall, whose influence any student of US politics should be familiar with. The lesson: money matters. Most of us know about the "five sisters" and the multimillions spent annually by big-business foundations and big cults like the Moonies and Focus on the Family to push right-wing views since the 1970s. Add a zero or two to that and you'll understand what we're facing now. The Bush Administration's partisan looting of the federal treasury could ensure right-wing Republican dominance of US politics for the next fifty years unless the Democrats and independents realize what they're up against and figure out how to defeat it.
http://tinyurl.com/7tv73
by Sherlock Google
Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 08:48:20 AM PDT
Brent Wilkes & Mitchell Wade - Bagmen in the Successful Plot to Take Over the United States and Enrich GOP Officeholders
The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you.
Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?
And what did the Dukester do to get his Rolls-Royce, anyway? Whose Lear Jet was he flying around in?
* Sherlock Google's diary :: ::
*
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes. The War on Terra is on!
Even more money for you and the GOP then.
It's a simple plan--one even the average American can understand.
Here's how Wilkes and Wade, with the help of the Culture of Corruption, made all of themselves wealthy with taxpayer money.
Here's Wilkes former life as a CIA financier of black bag operations to introduce him, from Cannonfire:
Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those "outside" businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:
Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen -- including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization - to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.
WFC still exists: http://www.downtownaugusta.com/...
ADCS, the company Wilkes headquartered in Poway, was founded on software designed by a German firm called VPMax. I think we should see VPMax's role in this as analogous to that of the Romanian concern which provided those wool uniforms to Saddam Hussein. As I suggested earlier, Wilkes empire is largely a collection of false fronts built on a small foundation of "real" products, usually taken from other, smaller players.
And from there, we enter the current scandal. About which, more to come soon.
Now Cannonfire on the current scandal:
Wilkes' firms received millions of taxpayer dollars; Daniel Hopsicker puts the amount at $700 million, although mainstream journalists speak of a much lower figure. Regardless of the amount, sources agree that the Defense Department did not really like or need his document conversion services. And Wilkes' list of companies included obvious fakes.
Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes -- a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128,
That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is www.mirrorlabs.com.
That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.
However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.
A background check on www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes' fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)
I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money? Here is the organization that really has -- or had -- offices at that address: ADCS PAC! That's where the money went.
Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.
So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?
Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.
All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that "both sides do it." That simply is not true.
The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other "subsidiaries" were also used as funding mechanisms.
By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?
Other recipients of Wilkes' largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole...
And then there's Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections.
Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you're missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself -- using "false fronts" to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials.
Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
While I believe that the Wilkes Corporation (also known as ADCS and Group W Advisors) intended to hire enough people to give his firm a more convincing veneer of legitimacy, the available evidence indicates that Wilkes' company existed primarily as a way-station for political pay-offs.
Remember the go-go days of the internet? Remember when a snazzy web page could make a tiny, under-financed company appear to be a massive conglomerate -- even when the firm conducted little actual business?
Update that scenario to the post-9/11 era, and you have the Wilkes corporation. Apparently, they did provide the military with document services -- which means, basically, that they scanned a lot of hard-copy pages that had been yellowing in file drawers. For example -- and this may be the only example -- ADCS worked on a project involving digitizing documents related to the building of the Panama Canal.
...
Is the Pentagon truly willing to pay three-quarters of a billion dollars to anyone who wants to run some old docs through a scanner? I know quite a few people who would volunteer to take that gig...
I still have yet to discover any evidence that the other "defense-related" enterprises operating under the Wilkes umbrella were genuine businesses. "Group W Media," the advertising agency with no discernable clients, was a front for something -- I don't yet know what. "Group W Transportation" amounted to a time-share arrangement involving a Lear jet. "Al Dust Properties" and "Group W Holdings" supposedly owned properties -- but I can't trace any holdings beyond the impressive building which the Wilkes Corporation called home. (It's now up for auction, by the way.) MailSafe Inc. supposedly offers "mail decontamination, digital capture, and electronic distribution to government and commercial entities." But the web site has disappeared, and the company seems to have left zero imprint on corporate America. Where is the evidence that it actually provided any services to clients?
"PerfectWave Technologies" has (or had) what seems, at first, to be an impressive web page advertising speech recognition devices for the military. (That page is really little more than a ghost, since the official Wilkes Corp. site no longer points to it.) Look closer: The site does not specify any PerfectWave products. Neither do we encounter any named personnel or development teams. No order information. If this company makes battlefield-ready high-tech equipment, why doesn't the the web site mention any departments, managers or employees? All we get is a single phone number and a fax number. Now conduct a Google search: Aside from channeling funds to politicians, PerfectWave hasn't done anything to warrant a mention.
"Pure Aqua Technologies" another Wilkes operation, seems to be pure snake oil. No address, no telephone number, no nothing -- except this stupid web page, which is a joke.
This from a Kossak, LieparDestin:
And thats when things start to get interesting for me. Take a look at the Group W Media site again. For an advertising firm, thats like... no substance. No nothing. Just a single phone number and a mysterious login form.
Then take a look at another site owned by Wilkes, this time a company by the name of Archer Logistics. Noting any similarities? A little substance, a smokescreen mostly. No employee names, ceo names, nothing.
On to Acoustical Communication Systems. A bit more substance to this company on first glance, but after a mere look around you'll notice its all filler. No news, no employee names, no nothing. A Google or two will turn up that this and other companies listed, apparently never did anything of substance at all. Notice the address of 13970 Stowe Drive
Poway, CA 92064, the same as that Group W Media and ADCS.
How about Liberty Defense Tech.
AkamaiInfo Tech thanks to archive.org is a bit interesting merely for the fact that the name is so similar to that of Akamai Tech, who's CEO was on one of the flights that crashed into the WTC.
Now my favorite so far is PerfectWave Technologies Look at that site! Fancy Smancy, at first glance you think you have something. Second glance even. But try one more time, notice the address: LOCATION
13970 Stowe Drive, Poway, CA 92064. Notice the lack ways to contact them. Lack of employee information or any media releases, etc. Google and Yahoo turn up nothing from this company except donations to the GOP. All these high-level companies, all in this 11 million dollar building , but at the same time this article says that only 100 people work at the building. But anyhow, more on PerfectWave. Political Money Line has these contributions listed:
Gelwix, Max D
5/12/2004 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
RELY ON YOUR BELIEFS FUND
2 . Gelwix, Max D
9/26/2003 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
FUTURE LEADERS PAC
3 . Gelwix, Max D.
6/9/2004 $2,500.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave Technoligies/President [Contribution]
REFORM PAC
4 . Gelwix, Max D.
8/14/2003 $5,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
AMERICANS FOR A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
5 . GELWIX, MAX P MR.
6/26/2003 $2,000.00
POWAY, CA 92064
PERFECT WAVE/COO [Contribution]
BUSH-CHENEY '04 (PRIMARY) INC
Try using the same site to search for ADCS, Wilkes (Brent and Regina), MZM etc.
Now I dont know if Im misinterpreting all this but to me it looks like: Wilkes and Co payoff Cunningham to get them DOD contracts. Wilkes and Co (guessing) subcontract these to whomever it is they subcontract them to, and skim a load off the top, funneling it into dummy business's to turn around and donate it to the GOP & GOP related causes.
Oh almost forgot the oddest for last The Poway Mafia. Another site owned by Wilkes. Definately creepy.
Most of Wilkes Companies, when you go into those sites above, HAVE THE SAME ADDRESS AND EVEN HAVE THE SAME FAX NUMBER: 858-848-0400!! They are obviously fake fronts for laundering taxpayer money into GOP TV ads.
Now Mitchell Wade, from Cannonfire:
unlike Wilkes, kept the MZM Pac housed in the very same office. (We must presume that they didn't have a great deal of office space, since unrelated tenants are in the same building.) When we look at the data on MZM Pac and its activities in 2003-2004, we learn that the population of this company has grown by leaps and bounds.
The PAC now lists roughly 100 names. A close scan of the names indicates that wives and children were recruited to the cause -- the cause being, of course, donations to G.O.P. candidates. (One of the named donors is "Joe Dollar." That can't be real -- can it?) Nearly all the donors are listed as employees of MZM Inc., and many have grandiose titles -- Chairman of this, VP of that. MZM employees, we learn, were told they had to make the donations or be fired. I believe there are laws against that sort of thing.
Frankly, I'm not at all sure how MZM transformed itself from a two-man law office into a go-go defense and intelligence firm.
For that, it would seem, is the final incarnation of MZM. According to the Center for Public Integrity
MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company's Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.
In addition to its D.C. headquarters, MZM has field offices in Miami, Tampa, San Antonio, San Diego and Suffolk, Va. The company employs about 70 people.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has "come out of a flat period" with defense industry contracts.
In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.
In November 2002, MZM opened a computer center in Charlottesville, Va., to house classified engineering intelligence in a digital mapping and architecture analysis system. Twelve employees in that office are developing the program for the Pentagon. It is designed to provide digital maps of thousands of buildings worldwide. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the mapping system will help soldiers and planners know details of buildings -- even which way doors open and close.
At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. The data page goes on to name a number of individuals involved with this work -- intelligence analysts, generals, the kind of people whom we would expect to be involved with such an enterprise. Cornelison seems to have disappeared.
But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL -- www.mzinc.com -- is blank, as is Google's cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
Update [2005-12-10 12:47:8 by Sherlock Google]: Found out more about MZM being investigated for intelligence work for the agency that cooked the aluminum tubes story, used as an excuse to invade Iraq. From the Washington Post:
The NGIC is a critical Army intelligence center with a staff of 900, three-quarters of whom are civilian scientists, engineers and intelligence analysts. The other one-quarter are active military.
Most NGIC employees work at a relatively new facility near Charlottesville, where they produce the Army's primary intelligence analyses of foreign armies, their force structures and capabilities. Others conduct scientific and technical studies on foreign weapons and technologies.
The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq's weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.
The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for "gross failure" in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was "completely wrong" when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket motor cases.
That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters June 29 that his office would conduct its own inquiry into the Silberman-Robb finding.
When Parker, the center spokeswoman, was asked last week about Rich, his son and NGIC personnel going to work for MZM or MZM employees working at the NGIC, she said in a statement that "due to the ongoing investigation on MZM, we must refer all questions concerning MZM, its employees and activities" to the Justice Department.
The MZM investigation is being carried out by the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney's offices in the District of Columbia and San Diego, according to one law enforcement official. That official would not say where the intelligence center may fit in.
MZM Involvement in Aluminum Tubes LIE!
Update [2005-12-10 16:54:41 by Sherlock Google]: Found by Rockmoonwater downthread, here is a look at the Group W/Perfect Wave Lobbying Report in which they report less than $10,000 income for Group W. Looks fishy, less than $10,000. Also shows how they split everything up at Group W to no doubt avoid certain disclosure.
Group W Lobby Reports and Registrations
These Wilkes and MZM companies were mostly frauds, bull, a sham, counterfeit, simulated, false. They were fronts to collect quid pro quo contracts from fellow GOP wingnuts.
The taxpayer money went straight from the US Treasury to the Wilkes and MZM PACS and from there cycled back to the GOP campaigns and the GOP K Street Cartel.
All the while, DoD never asked for these contracts and even complained about ADCS and was ignored!
Kudos to LieparDestin on this one, whose diary scrolled off before we could realize what Cannonfire and this John Dean fellow had uncovered.
Oh and RECOMMEND like you've never recommended before. Read it out loud to your family and friends for fun and enjoyment. Send the link to blogs, lists, etc. We need a Blog Swarm!
Update [2005-12-11 17:14:40 by Sherlock Google]: A house staffer, Eric Massa, said this is what is going on and explained further when asked if the phony front companies were true: "This has been going on since "K Street"
Yep, the scam works just the way that the San Diego union has been reporting it in the Cunningham case. First, a member of Congress slips a "member add" into the budget (wether appropriations or authorization) and then once that money comes through for the company - the pay offs begin. It has now been laid bare by Cunningham and I suspect that there will be others involved. The interesting point is that this will be a Republican issue in that they control both Houses of Congress and therefore have total and complete control over the budget process. In fact, the Republican leadership under Delay have told companies that if the talk to Members on both the sides of the isle then they cannot request anything from the Republicans - and since they are calling the shots 100% of the time in the budget process then they write out any company that even talks to a Democrat. It's all very public and very out there and will only be more so now that Cunningham has admitted to the entire scam. Stand by for more from that case
Massa added another comment that Rumsfeld could be taken down too by all this.
Rumsfeld is Fungible
Update [2005-12-11 19:12:36 by Sherlock Google]: Delay got Wilkes' money:
Cunningham case casts new light on donations
Tags: Brent Wilkes, Tom DeLay, Group W, Poway Mafia, Duke Cunningham, John Doolittle (all tags)
Permalink | 389 comments
Comments: Expand Shrink Hide (Always) | Indented Flat (Always)
Daily Kos Help
*
Sherlock Tip Jar! (4.00 / 301)
Raking Muck is "HARD WORK"!
by Sherlock Google on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 08:49:00 AM PDT
o
Good work. But it isn't exactly "news" (4.00 / 21)
back in 1972, the GOP was doing and had been doing - exactly the same thing for a long time. And using the threat of having to comply with environmental cleanup regulations if the Democrats got power, to seduce over formerly-D big businessmen to the Dark Side:
(From my blog, a post on Dec 1. $750,000 is over $3 million in today's dollars.)
Since his return from Miami, Bernstein had become obsessed with the $89,000 in Mexican checks that had passed through Bernard Barker's bank account. Why Mexico? According to the GAO investigator, Maurice Stans had said the money had originally come from Texas. But no one at the GAO had been able to understand why $89,000 in campaign contributions were routed through Mexico.
In mid-August, Bernstein had begun calling all the employees of the Texas Comittee for the Re-election of the President. [P@L - aka CRP] A secretary at the committee's offices in Houston said that the FBI had been there to inteview Emmett Moore, the committee treasurer.
"They questioned me about how money was transferred to Mexico," Moore said. "They said there had been allegations to that effect - that money was transferred to and from Mexico."
Moore immediately sought to make clear to Bernstein that the FBI agents were not interested in his own actions, but in those of the Texas committee's chairman, Robert H. Allen, who was also president of the Gulf Resources and Chemical Co. of Houston. The agents had expressed particular interest in Allen's relationship with a Mexico City lawyer, Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, who represented Gulf Resources' interests in Mexico.
The Mexican connection. What did it mean?
Moore, who said he had been as unnerved by the FBI's visit as by Bernstein's call, knew nothing of the reasons for moving money across the border.
Bernstein began leaving messages for Robert Allen on his home and office. They were not answered. Finally, on the morning that Maurice Stans summoned the GAO's auditor to Miami, Bernstein got up at 6:00 a.m. - 5:00 a.m. in Texas - and called Allen at his Houston home. Allen sleepily declined to discuss the matter, "because it's before the grand jury."
Using his primitive high-school Spanish, Bernstein intensified his search for Ogarrio and for any information on the elusive Mexican lawyer. Gradually, the enterprise became the object of good-natured office ridicule. Bernstein was unable to construct anything other than disjointed school-book phrases in the present tense. Ken Ringle, a reporter on the Virginia staff who sat next to Bernstein, would shout, "Bernstein's talking Spanish again," and reporters and editors would walk over to offer appropriate commentary. The calls went to bankers, relatives of Ogarrio, his former law partners, his clients, Mexican banking commisioners, the police, law schools. Nada. The standing office joke had it that Bernstein heard the whole Watergate story and didn't understand it.
Not surprisingly, the Nixon campaign's Mexican connection was uncovered in English.
On August 24, Bernstein called Martin Dardis in Miami. The chief investigator said he was coming up with pretty good information on the Mexican checks, really weird stuff that he didn't want to talk about on the telephone. Dardis assured Bernstein that it would be worth his while to fly down to Miami again...
...Bernstein asked him what he had learned about the Mexican checks.
"It's called 'laundering,'" Dardis began. "You set up a money chain that makes it impossible to trace the source. The Mafia does it all the time. So does Nixon, or at least that's what this guy who's the lawyer for Robert Allen says. This guy says that Stans set up the whole thing. It was Stans' idea. He says they were doing it elsewhere too, that Stans didn't want any way they could trace where the money was coming from."
Dardis said he had learned the whole story from Richard Haynes, a Texas lawyer who represented Allen. Haynes had outlined the Mexican laundry operation to Dardis this way:
Shortly before April 7, the effective date of the new campaign finance law, and the last day anonymous contributions could be legally accepted, Stans had gone on a final fund-raising swing across the Southwest. If Democrats were reluctant to contribute to a Republican presidential candidate, Stans assured them that their anonymity could be absolutely assured, if necessary by moving their contributions thorugh a Mexican middleman whose bank records were not subject to subpoena by U.S. bank investigators. The protection would also allow CRP to recieve donations from corporations, which were forbidden by campaign laws to contribute to political candidates; from business executives and labor leaders having difficulties with government regulatory agencies; and from special-interest groups and such underground sources of income as the big Las Vegas gambling casinos and mob-dominated unions. To guarantee anonymity, the "gifts," whether checks, security notes or stock certificates, would be taken across the border to Mexico, converted to cash in Mexico City through deposit in a bank account established by a Mexican national with no known ties to the Nixon campaign, and only then sent on to Washington. The only record would be jealously guarded in Washington by Stans.
From Houston, Haynes confirmed the operation to Bernstein. An operator familiar with the rough-and-tumble of Texas politics, Haynes spoke in the breezy, swashbuckling style that had earned him the nickname "Racehorse" in courthouses from Dallas to Austin.
"Shit, Stans has been running this operation for years with Nixon," he said. "Nothing really wrong with it. That's how you give your tithe."
Robert Allen, the head of the Nixon campaign organization in Texas, was merely the conduit for the funds moving to Mexico, including the $89,000 that had gone into Barker's bank account, Haynes said. Ogarrio was the money-changer, converting the checks and notes given him by Allen into American dollars, both in cash and in dollar drafts drawn on his account at the Banco Internacional.
Haynes estimated that $750,000 raised by Stans and his two principal fund-raisers in Texas had moved through Mexico in the final weeks of the pre-April 7 campaign.
"Maury came through here like a goddamned train," said Haynes, "he was really ballin' the jack. He'd say to the Democrats, the big money men who'd never gone for a Republican before, 'You know we got this crazy man Ruckelshaus* back east who'd just as soon close your factory as let the smokestack belch. He's a hard man to control and he's not the only one like that in Washington. People need a place to go to, to cut through the red tape when you've got a guy like that on the loose. Now, don't misunderstand; we're not making any promises, all we can do is make ourselves accessible..."
* William D. Ruckelshaus, then head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the message was indelible, said Haynes. "Maury's a right high-type fellow; he would never actually threaten any of those guys. Then he'd do his Mexican hat dance, tell them there'd be no danger of the Democrats or their company's competitors finding out about the contributing, it would all get lost in Mexico...If a guy pleaded broke, Maury would get him to turn over stock in his company or some other stock. He was talking 10 percent, saying it was worth 10 percent of some big businessman's income to keep Richard Nixon in Washington and be able to stay in touch."
That was Saturday, August 26, three days after the President had been nominated. In Washington, Woodward had just received the gAO report, finally released for Sunday's papers. It listed 11 "aparent and possible violations" of the new law and referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. It also stated that Stans maintained a secret slush fund of cash in his office totalling at least $350,000. At one time the fund included the cash that had come from the $25,000 Dalhberg check and the four Mexican checks totalling $89,000.
Woodward wrote the top portion of a story from the GAO report. From Miami, Bernstein dictated an account of the Mexican laundry and Haynes' estimate that not $89,000 but $750,000 had been washed across the border.
After several lengthy conversations, Bernstein and Woodward decided not to refer to Stans' other fundraising tactics that Haynes had described. Both were wary of the lawyer's language. Hayne's description of the "Stans shakedown cruise" as he called it, was filed for further investigation. The GAO investigator confirmed the subtance of the Mexican laundry operation to Woodward.
Three days later, Tuesday, August 29, the President scheduled a press conference at his oceanside home in San Clemente, California. Reporters waited under large palm and eucalyptus trees on a sunny morning.
"With regard to the matter of the handling of campaign funds," the President said, "we have a new law here in which technical violations have occurred and are occurring, apparently on both sides."
What are the Democrats' violations? a reporter asked.
"I think that will come out in the balance of this week. I will let the political people talk about that, but I understand that there have been [violations] on both sides," Nixon remarked calmly.
Stans, the President said, is "an honest man and one who is very meticulous." In fact, Stans was investigating the matter, the President said, "very, very thoroughly, because he doesn't want any evidence at all to be outstanding, indicating that we have not complied with the law."
The President rejected suggestions that a special prosecutor, independent of the Justice Department, be appointed, and disclosed that his counsel, John W. Dean III, had conducted a Watergate investigation: "I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous peole in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.*
Woodward, in Washington, wrote a story from the transcript of the press conference, and listed some of the people under investigation who, as the President had been so careful to point out, were not "presently employed" in the administration: Hunt, Liddy, Stans, Sloan and Mitchell.
*John Osborne, the highly respected Nixon watcher for the New Republic, wrote, a week later: "The thing I'll always remember about Mr. Nixon's first 'political press conference' of 1972 was his handling of the funds and bugging matter and our failure to handle him as a vulnerable candidate should be handled. It was a lesson in the msemerizing power of the presidency."
--from Chapter 3, All The President's Men, ©1974 Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward. All transcription errors mine.
Many of the people involved went on to remain respected community leaders - I found one of them was getting a building at Texas A&M named after him, the Mexican lawyer's company is involved in a case with big multi-nationals in Europe, all of these people go on on, plutocrats and their trusted minions, while like in the days of Jean Valjean, steal $10 bucks and you're a criminal who deserves death according to Scalito...
"Don't be a janitor on the Death Star!" - Grey Lady Bast (change @ for AT to email)
by bellatrys on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:01:57 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
+
Agreed. (4.00 / 12)
And, I've been stating this simple rule on the neo-con Rethug war machine:
U.S. Taxpayer => Treasury => Iraq Defense Contractors => Republicans.
CONCLUSION:
Any Dem who is supporting Iraq is authorizing the continued financing of Republican causes for the next 50 years.
by maxschell on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:10:58 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
#
Gotta watch those purchasing agents! n/t (none / 1)
Without the Israeli press, the world would be a little darker. -7.00, -2.92
by mattes on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:16:48 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
*
Indeed. (4.00 / 4)
I should also add a clarification to my "agree": yes this problem has been around along time, but Dems used to profit almost as much as Rethugs. That has changed...dramatically and thank you to Sherlock Google for highlighting this.
The more light that is cast on this the better...well done Sherlock Google.
by maxschell on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:32:18 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
o
I noticed that very clearly (4.00 / 7)
when I was building my "Matrix" last year, there was more than just the buying of idea-mongers and meme-manufacturers going on - the fact that looking at the amounts of money donated via Open Secrets and Buy Blue by big business to both Republican and Democratic pols and parties, you could see an extreme disproportion. some of which you could attribute to the fact that the GOP is currently in the WH, but not all of it.
But the fact remains - that a) yes, Democrats on the whole are just as in hock to the Big Money Devil as Republicans, even if they did get cheated on the whole (I can imagine a whole skit of Politicians in Hell, built around the idea of the Damned kvetching as they wait outside Lucifer's Sulphury Gates, and finding out how much or how little each one went for) and b) this is always the problem with democracy, and the fate of republics - that how do you stop corruption, when the enforcement of anti-corruption laws depends on the people who enforce them not being bought out by those who stand to suffer by them?
And also, the "See, the Democrats do it too!" is an old, old tactic of the Nixonians - and again, it was partly valid. The Devil lies with half-truths in the old stories; in this case, the Republicans get away with murder by pointing out that their opponents have been wielding the brass knuckles too...
"Don't be a janitor on the Death Star!" - Grey Lady Bast (change @ for AT to email)
by bellatrys on Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 11:03:41 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
#
Exactly! (4.00 / 5)
U.S. Taxpayer => Treasury => Iraq Defense Contractors => Republicans.
My mother coined the phrase "lying looters" to refer to this administration, and not all of it is as blatant as this story or necessarily even illegal. First send large amounts of money to organizations managed by people whose politics are in line with those of the Party for services delivered or not, often called "consulting" if it's not clear that the recipients are actually doing anything for the public. These people notice they get big government contracts and get rich when the Party is in power and the Party sometimes explicitly tells them the other party will take away their gravy train, so they donate to the Party to keep it in power. Some will hit the legal limit in donations and lean on their family, friends, work associates, congregations, etc to send more. When you're throwing around billions of dollars, even a fraction of a percent of it going back to the Party is a huge advantage over the competition. You don't even need a spoken conspiracy, although I'm certain this administration is rife with them.
Now look at this administration's use of private businesses for all sorts of things that used to be done internally within the government, under the guise of competition and efficiency but often ending up costing more than it used to. Look at the K Street Project, threatening lobbyists who used to donate to both parties to only donate to Republicans or else their bills won't pass. Look at the faith-based initiative to funnel money into churches explicitly to use for spreading their faith and with financial oversight removed. The Bush Administration is creating a significant class of upper-middle income earners who are dependant on the Republican Party for their livelihood and have the desire and financial means to keep it strong. For all the Republican whining about government workers' unions all voting Democratic (stop trying to cut their wages then), this is bigger.
Quick history lesson: After the revolution, all the banks in New York were owned by Federalists who refused to give loans to Republicans. Aaron Burr, who played both sides but had Republican sympathies, created the Bank of Manhattan to break this partisan hold on capital and finance his own political movement. The Burrite political movement later became known as Tammany Hall, whose influence any student of US politics should be familiar with. The lesson: money matters. Most of us know about the "five sisters" and the multimillions spent annually by big-business foundations and big cults like the Moonies and Focus on the Family to push right-wing views since the 1970s. Add a zero or two to that and you'll understand what we're facing now. The Bush Administration's partisan looting of the federal treasury could ensure right-wing Republican dominance of US politics for the next fifty years unless the Democrats and independents realize what they're up against and figure out how to defeat it.
http://tinyurl.com/7tv73
bin66 - 5. Jun, 03:09
