In the "Tell me something I don't know" portion of the Chris Mathews Show, reporter Chip Reid implied an expansion of the
Foley Coverup investigation was about to take place. When he said this I immediately remembered this story at
CQ Politics.com
It seems that many of the named players in the Foley Coverup scandal have key roles in another investigation obstruction involving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in defense contracts, bid rigging, secret orginizations, etc. Could this be part of the expansion?
I've puzzled why Republicans didn't quietly ditch Foley, Kolbe , and others. The extreme risk seems to out weigh any possible gains by keeping them around.
Some quotes next:
Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.
The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert's chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.
snip
"We got called into his office," said Garant, who served previously in the Defense Department's Comptroller's Office before becoming an investigator for the Appropriations Committee. Van Der Meid shouted at them, Garant said: "What the [expletive] are you looking at this for? . . . He wanted to shut the operation down right then and there."
snip
By the time the investigators said they were ordered to drop their work, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., had taken over as Appropriations chairman amid expectations by House GOP leaders that he would be more of a team player than Young.
snip
"That whole organization was very, very secret and very few people even knew that it existed, but it was a great dispenser of money," said Garant, who was dismissed in March from his position as a contract investigator.
The Appropriations Committee's investigation team, formed in 1943, has been in turmoil for several years. The upheaval culminated last week in Chairman Lewis' decision to dismiss all 60 remaining contractors on the investigative staff, which included many retired investigators from the FBI, CIA and other government agencies. A permanent staff of 16 remains.
Personally , I would like to read more stories about Republican corruption and scandal the next nine days.