The Raw Story | Pelosi asks for Cunningham inquiry

11/30/2005 @ 4:34 pm
Filed by RAW STORY


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has written a letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), requesting a congressional probe of disgraced California Representative "Duke" Cunningham, Roll Call is reporting.

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Specifically, Pelosi is asking for a bipartisan committee with experience in national security to investigate Cunningham's recent admissions of guilt in a criminal case plea bargain. Cunningham has admitted to accepting inappropriate gifts from two defense contractors while serving on the House Intelligence Committee.

Pelosi asks that the committee determine whether or not Cunningham compromised national security or misused classified information in aiding the contractors.

Excerpted from Nov. 30 issue of Roll Call:

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?[Cunningham] has admitted engaging in criminal conduct with private companies seeking contracts from the United States government for national security-related matters,? Pelosi wrote in her letter. ?We do not know the extent of the information which he provided to these companies, or how it may have compromised national security.?

Pelosi also wants Hastert to ask the Department of Defense, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to conduct their own investigations into Cunningham?s relationship with MZM, Inc., and ADCS, Inc., two defense firms. Pelosi did not name the companies in her letter to Hastert, but the firms have been linked to Cunningham in media reports, and the Justice Department is continuing its own criminal investigation into his activities.

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Cunningham allegedly received these illicit payments from Mitchell Wade, former owner of MZM, and Brent Wilkes, president of ADCS. Neither man was formally named in the plea agreement, although media reports and corporate records indicate that Wilkes and Wade are the ?Co-conspirator #1? and ?Co-conspirator #2? referred to in Cunningham?s plea deal.

With help from Cunningham and other lawmakers, ADCS has received at least $80 million in Pentagon contracts since 1999, while MZM won $160 million from the Defense Department over a three-year period. Democrats want to explore how those contracts were handled within the Pentagon and are not content to let Cunningham?s plea deal short-circuit any Washington, D.C.-based probe of the matter. Democrats are privately threatening to use other parliamentary maneuvers to force a Cunningham probe if their request to Hastert is turned down.

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