Key Witness Testifies Cunningham Tried to Hide Transactions

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Key Witness Testifies Cunningham Tried to Hide Transactions
By Greg Moran
The San Diego Union Tribune

Saturday 13 October 2007

A former defense contractor who has admitted bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham testified yesterday that Cunningham tried to concoct a plan to conceal their business dealings after news about them first broke in July 2005.

Mitchell Wade said that after a June 2005 story in The San Diego Union-Tribune detailed how he had paid Cunningham a wildly inflated price for his Del Mar-area home, the congressman said Wade should say it was nothing more than "a deal between two friends."

"I thought it was ridiculous," Wade said. Soon after, he sent his lawyer to federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and offered to cooperate with the burgeoning investigation.

Wade testified yesterday at the bribery trial of Wilkes, his one-time mentor, about a years-long pattern of increasingly audacious bribes and gift-giving to Cunningham.

The rise of Wade's own Washington-based company, MZM Inc., was fueled by the bribes he gave to Cunningham, he said. In return, the congressman used his influence to appropriate funds for Defense Department programs and steer contracts from those programs to Wade.

Wade testified that he learned how to do this by watching Wilkes, whom he worked for as a consultant beginning in 1998.

Wilkes lavished Cunningham with fine food, liquor and trips - and in return Wilkes's Poway-based company, ADCS Inc., reaped millions in government contracts, Wade said.

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