Big shoe drops. Wilkes decides to bring the gang down with him.

[kpete]

NYT: WILKES SPEAKS -- Earmarks System "Little More Than a Shakedown"
By Justin Rood - August 5, 2006, 1:07 PM

Brent Wilkes, a.k.a. "Co-conspirator #1" -- who allegedly bribed Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- has been silent since the Cunningham scandal broke. Now, he has given his first on-the-record interview to the New York Time http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/washington/06wilkes.html?hp&ex=1154836800&en=b811f7519279d9b2&ei=5094&partner=homepage :

Mr. Wilkes had set up separate meetings with the lawmakers hoping to win a government contract, and he planned to punctuate each pitch with a campaign donation. But his hometown congressman, Representative Bill Lowery of San Diego, a Republican, told him that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done, Mr. Wilkes recalled.

Instead, Mr. Wilkes said, Mr. Lowery taught him the right way to do it: hand over the envelope in the hallway outside the suite, at least a few feet away.

That was the beginning of a career built on what Mr. Wilkes calls “transactional lobbying,” which made him a rich man but also landed him in the middle of a criminal investigation.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001278.php

[Warpy]

1. If Wilkes has been squeezed hard enough to make him pop open

this is big news, indeed. Wilkes is connected to the Delay scandal, to Abramoff, and to just about every GOP congressman in office.

For those who don't know, bloggers have been looking at Wilkes for a very long time. Apparently, he's a sweetheart whose Group W has a bunch of little corporations whose only function seems to be laundering taxpayer dollars from DOD contracts into GOP contributions. The Mirror Corporation is one such outfit, a little company which was set up to beta test commercial software for corporations...until the DOD started giving them big bucks for doing nothing. At the same time, they began to get very generous to the GOP and to various right wing causes.

Brent Wilkes could make that whole stinking mess start to unravel. This interview isn't much, but the fact that he finally felt compelled to give one shows that he's starting to sweat.

[NMDemDist2]

2. sweet!

:hi:

[MissWaverly]

3. Oh, thank God he is talking

I suspected that this was happening, that this was why the Republicans were always so gung ho
on defense, it was a cash cow, this says a lot about all those cost overruns, not only did
we sacrifice to elect our dems, we also had to sacrifice to pay for their kickbacks from
defense contractors. This is why our soldiers are dying from lack of proper armor and weapons
while the GOPs ride that limo to the 5 star hotels.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Washington Babylon this is your final day, this is your final call

Si la loo babylon come 'round
You better know you better understand
'Fact you know you better hear what they say
Babylon this is your final day
Babylon this is your final call
Read the writin' it's on the wall
Said United we stand
And together we fall
And if I know that
You're not 'gon catch me in a rat pack
We not go fallin' on your death trap
No way....

Whoooooa oh oh oh oh whoa oh who oh oh
Whooooooa oh oh oh
Whoa oh oh o oh


The richest man in Babylon



http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060705fege01


Washington Babylon

California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty. He is now in jail, but his case exposed a world of bribery, booze, and broads that reaches into the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and Congress. Washington is wondering: Who's next?
By JUDY BACHRACH

he corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"—an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. A former Vietnam naval pilot who was awarded two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart, Cunningham, now 64, appropriated John Wayne's nickname and first ran for the House with the slogan "A congressman we can be proud of." Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Washington, in 1991, he made it his business to seem larger than life, telling people that his wartime heroics had inspired episodes in the movie Top Gun. His military service and expertise eventually earned him a place on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, with vast sway over the military budget, as well as on the intelligence committee, which oversees the C.I.A. and other spy agencies. Ever ready to defend the integrity of the armed forces, as he saw it, Duke excoriated Democrats who wanted to cut the defense budget, calling them the same people "who would put homos in the military."

But in November, Cunningham's heroic image came crashing down, and his swagger evaporated when he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in exchange for pressuring the Pentagon to buy their products and services. The government believes he was bribed chiefly by two men, identified in court documents as "co-conspirator No. 1" and "co-conspirator No. 2," now known to be Brent Wilkes and his protégé Mitchell Wade. (Wilkes has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes in this case.) The products they hawked—computer software to scan and convert military maps, drawings, and documents into digital format—lacked glamour, perhaps, but they made the two entrepreneurs and Cunningham wealthy, arrogant, and even reckless, courtesy of a compliant Pentagon. Wilkes's two dozen or so firms, in California and Virginia, raked in $100 million over the last decade, while Wade's Washington-based MZM Inc. has gotten $150 million since 2002.

According to prosecutors, Wilkes and Wade generously remunerated Duke Cunningham for steering government business their way. Wilkes, prosecutors allege, gave Cunningham more than $600,000 in bribes, including two checks totaling $100,000 and $525,000 to pay off a mortgage. (Wilkes, through his attorney, denies these allegations.) In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham with over $1 million—but he operated with more panache, indulging Cunningham's taste for outsize antiques. The trove he offered included Persian and Indian rugs, sleek Louis-Philippe and Restoration commodes, a $24,000 Victorian china hutch, leaded-glass cabinets, and silver candlesticks worth $5,600. "Duke liked his antiques big and he liked them expensive," explains a Maryland antiques dealer, who despaired of his taste. (Duke got other gifts as well: a secondhand Rolls-Royce and the use of Wade's 42-foot boat, renamed the Duke-Stir.)

The truth is no one knows if the $2.4 million in bribes Cunningham has admitted taking in his guilty plea is the final total. Duke's been at it for some time. In fact, right up to the end, the Maryland antiques dealer tells me, Cunningham was trying to get her to put one of his valuable 19th-century armoires in storage, "anywhere, he didn't care where," as long as it was far from the government's prying eyes. "Very immature, thinking the rules of the game didn't apply to him," the dealer says. But why should they? For years he had been running the game. (Cunningham's attorney, K. Lee Blalack II, refuses to comment on the substance of the case.)

Washington is unraveling.
"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations.



The richest man in babylon

There is no quidance in your kingdom
Your wicked walk in Babylon
There is no wisdom to your freedom
The richest man in babylon

Your beggars sleep outside your doorway
Your prophets leave to wonder on
You fall asleep at night with worry
The saddest man in Babylon

The wicked stench of exploitation
Hangs in the air and lingers on
Beneath the praise and admiration
The weakest man in Babylon

There is no hope left in your kingdom
Your servants have burned all their songs
Nobody here remembers freedom
The richest man in Babylon

Si la lou babylon go 'dain
Babylon gon' be rich again
But to we don' sick again
But no we no weak again
Babyloooon on on on on
(Rasta scat)
Sal la lou ca uba whoa
Si la douba douba do wa bay
??
Si la loo babylon come 'round
You better know you better understand
'Fact you know you better hear what they say
Babylon this is your final day
Babylon this is your final call
Read the writin' it's on the wall
Said United we stand
And together we fall
And if I know that
You're not 'gon catch me in a rat pack
We not go fallin' on your death trap
No way...

Whoooooa oh oh oh oh whoa oh who oh oh
Whooooooa oh oh oh
Whoa oh oh o oh

Thievery Corporation

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/10/114820/90


The richest men in Babylon



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.


Detail from an engraving of Georges Rochegrosse's
"The Death of Babylon," ca. 1901.