This is one of those diaries that combine speculation and analysis with historical fact. The result is a heady brew of government corruption, "deep politics", and intelligence agency overreach.
The speculation: the recent scandal, "Prostitution alleged in Cunningham case", is the latest instance of the government's use of prostitution to politically control and discredit people in high power. Furthermore, the Shirlington Limo linked prostitution scandal engulfing former Congressman Duke Cunningham and various intelligence-lined defense contractors was sprung by a faction of the CIA in an attempt to cripple government opponents in a power struggle over Iraq, foreign policy, and the control of intelligence (and by extension, state power).
The facts: These will be drawn on currently documented links, and on a discussion of past modus operendi of the CIA in using prostitution rings to blackmail and control people in government and business. The most significant example was in the original Watergate scandal itself.
Plenty more, including lots of links, over the flap.
There has already been a lot written on the topic herein, especially as related to the Cunningham-Shirlington Limousine-Brent Wilkes prostitution allegations. There have been stories in
The Washington Post, the
Wall Street Journal, at
Booman Tribune, as well as by
Daily Kos's own Sherlock Google.
I will summarize the main issues. From the Wash Post article cited above:
4/29/2006
.... In recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts....
Baker has a criminal record and has experienced financial difficulties, public records show. Last fall, his company was awarded a $21 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security to provide transportation, including limo service for senior officials....
... Mitchell J. Wade, a defense contractor who has admitted bribing the former congressman, told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with Shirlington Limousine, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington, the source said.
"Duke" Cunningham left Congress in November 2005 after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes from Wilkes and Wade, and a few others. Last February, Wade pleaded guilty to paying the bribes. He is known to be cooperating with investigators.
According to the WSJ (link above):
Mr. Wilkes hasn't been charged with any crime, and people with knowledge of the investigation say he recently decided he would fight any charges that might be filed rather than plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation. Michael Lipman, Mr. Wilkes's lawyer, denied his client had been involved in procuring prostitutes. "There was no such conduct. It did not happen," Mr. Lipman said. The lawyer added that "Mr. Wilkes and ADCS strongly believe that all of their actions have been proper and appropriate...."
No charges for Wilkes?? And he's said to have provided over $600,000 in bribes to Cunningham. Who the hell is Wilkes?
His best friend since Junior High is the current number #3 at the CIA, Dustin "Dusty" Foggo. According to ABC news, quoted at the Booman Tribune link above:
Foggo, who occasionally hosted the poker parties at his house in northern Virginia, is under investigation by the CIA's inspector general to determine whether he helped Wilkes gain CIA contracts.
...One of Wilkes' companies, Archer Logistics, won a contract to provide bottled water, first-aid kits and other supplies to CIA agents in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company had no previous experience with such work, having been founded a few months before the contract was granted.
Critics familiar with the contract, valued at $2 million to $3 million, say the CIA overpaid for the work. The contract was approved by the CIA office in Frankfurt, Germany, where Foggo oversaw acquisitions. Foggo did not personally sign the contract, however, said unnamed CIA officials who spoke with Newsweek.
Further... Sherlock Google, quoting Cannonfire, outs the intelligence links of Wilkes' company, ADCS:
Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the [CIA] 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....
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.
Caveat
Now this diary, which has to be (relatively) brief, can read like a lot of innuendo and tinfoil, so it is necessary that you follow the links to read all the info and get the big picture.
For instance, there was an important story by Walter Pincus back in July 2005 about Mitchell Wade's company, MZM, Inc., linking it to cronyism scandals at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC). What's important about that was the link to the latter to the false aluminum tubes story. Let's let Pincus tell us:
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....
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.
Putting it all together
While highly speculative, the latest string of revelations about the prostitution ring involving Cunningham, and Wade, is aimed at bringing down CIA-linked Wilkes, and possibly his friend Foggo. Foggo was an appointee of Porter Goss, Bush's man at CIA, sent in to clear out dissidents and Democrats. And there are dark hints that Goss himself will be implicated.
This is very dirty play, but nothing new in the world of spies and big politics... something that UC Berkeley historian Peter Dale Scott has called "deep politics".
In 1984, Jim Hougan wrote Secret Agenda, a book that was well received by the Washington Post. Hougan showed how the Watergate burglary was aimed at tapping phones at DNC headquarters that were themselve associated with a supposed prostitution ring supplying DNC staffers.
From the review:
At bottom, [Hougan's] contention is this: Hunt and McCord never left the CIA. They remained under the control of the agency, with Hunt spying on the White House as well as on the Democrats.
There never was a tap placed on the telephones in the DNC offices. Instead, the conversations that were monitored... were from the wiretap of a prostitution ring located in the nearby Columbia Plaza Apartments, some of whose customers were being steered there by a secretary in the DNC. This tap most likely had been planted by a private detective named Louis Russell, who died of a heart attack in 1973. Russell was a former FBI agent, a friend of one of the prostitutes, an employe of McCord's private security firm, and, in Hougan's view, a CIA operative tapping the calls for the agency....
This secret CIA operation involving the prostitutes was so sensitive that McCord and Russell set out to sabotage the break-in at Watergate to insure that the other Watergate burglars wouldn't stumble across it. "In effect," Hougan writes, "the snake had swallowed its tail: CIA agents working under cover of Nixon's re-election committee came to be targeted against their own operation...." By doing this, Hougan says, the information from the wiretaps on the prostitutes would be preserved for the exclusive use of the CIA, which presumably would use it to blackmail important people, or to create psychiatric profiles of them.
Where's the Money?
So, where are my links to prove the limo-hooker case is intelligence linked. I don't have them. It is speculative, but based on how other cases have played out. Consider that:
the individuals involved are linked to Congressional intelligence and/or defense contracting panels and companies
One individual -- the one remaining major figure who is unindicted -- is linked to the CIA: Brent Wilkes
The shady past of the limousine company owner and the ease with which it obtained a supposed no-bid contract from the Department of Homeland Security
The suspicious nature in which all the leaks on this case have emerged.
These are not enough, by far, I grant you, to prove a thing. Then... there's history...
Sex! used to bring down politicians! Nah... that would never happen. Just ask Bill Clinton.
Or how about Bernard Kerik? When the latter's nanny problem was seen as maybe insufficient to bring down his nomination to head the new, powerful Homeland Security department, the New York Daily News discovered Kerik had been having extramarital affairs at a secret Battery Park apartment. The Daily News attributed the info to anonymous sources with "intimate knowledge". Photos of the bedroom were published.
Readers of spy novels have long known about the "honey trap". Readers of John Le Carre's famous novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold certainly will remember the use of the female Communist Party member in that book.
I would love to go into detail on the use of prostitution and sex to blackmail and control, manipulate, and if necessary, bring down powerful politicians and businessmen. It would be juicy, but too long for a DailyKos diary. Simliar stories could (and have) been told about the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover (the latter said to have extensive sex files on many important Americans, held in order to blackmail, or out, if necessary -- see the 1998 Knight-Ridder story on this).
Follow the links. There is much to learn. I wrote this because we are blogger, not mainstream media. The mainstream media will report the salubrious details, but the meaning of the event will be lost. We are seeing the use, I believe, of yet another prostitution ring or sex scandal as a weapon in an inter-governmental struggle.
It is our job to understand and pass on a greater understanding than the MSM gives. In other words, to give context and analysis. I hope this diary has provided a little of that.