Dusty Foggo documents released... Immigration fraud, assault and battery, other corruption....

[cascadiance]

A whole SLEW of articles this morning on this topic, as it would seem a whole bunch of documents just got released that TPM Muckraker is pleading for people to look through for details. I personally wonder, since 27 of the 28 counts against Foggo were dismissed for "security reasons", if we're still seeing only a small segment of the real criminal acts this bum committed, and some in government on a bipartisan basis are doing so in hopes of sating our appetite for a "wealth" of juicy information out on him now, but holding back on the real serious stuff that we should be getting.

Anyway, here are some of the articles that came out just in the last 24 hours, that you all might want to read...

From ProPublica:
http://www.propublica.org/article/corruption-touched-cias-covert-operations

Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations
by Marcus Stern, ProPublica - February 25, 2009 12:00 am EST



Above is a never-before-published picture of the wine locker at the Capital Grille that defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes shared with Kyle Dusty Foggo when Foggo was the executive director of the CIA and illegally steering contracts to Wilkes. Wilkes paid for many expensive meals for Foggo at the restaurant. (Photo by Jerry Kammer)

Paramilitary agents for the CIA's super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to "light up" targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD's sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.

That information was contained in a series (1) of court (2) filings (3) released in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA.

One remarkable affidavit came from a leader of SAD, a branch of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, which handles covert actions. It indicates that Foggo forced SAD to use a shell company set up by defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes to handle its sensitive air operations, even though Wilkes and his company had no experience in clandestine aviation operations.

Wilkes was Foggo's boyhood friend and a co-conspirator in the bribery scandal that erupted around former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is serving more than eight years in federal prison.

...

From the Associated Press:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hSoMDsA5PakZOd1o1yx655Egw9ngD96IR5VO0

Feds: Misconduct by CIA's Foggo spanned decades

By MATTHEW BARAKAT – 26 minutes ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former CIA agent rose to the agency's No. 3 rank despite a record of misconduct that stretched over 20 years, prosecutors said, until his career came to an end with his conviction in a bribery scheme.

In court papers, prosecutors describe how Kyle "Dusty" Foggo was investigated in the late 1980s for punching a bicyclist in a traffic dispute and for numerous relationships with foreign women that could have compromised security.

Foggo rose through the ranks to become the agency's executive director from 2004 to 2006. Had his crimes gone uncovered, he planned to retire and run for Congress in San Diego, according to prosecutors.

Instead, Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

...

From TPM Muckraker:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/foggos_road_rage_plus_your_help_needed.php?ref=m1

Foggo's Road Rage ... Plus: Your Help Needed!
By Zachary Roth - February 25, 2009, 11:33AM



There are certainly more important revelations contained in the trove of court documents filed yesterday in connection with the sentencing of former CIA Number 3 Dusty Foggo, who pleaded guilty in the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. Indeed, Pro Publica's Marcus Stern has already picked out some key ones.

But this excerpt from the government's sentencing memo certainly sheds some light on what kind of a guy Foggo was:

In 1989, while stationed overseas, Foggo stopped his car in front of a bicycle bypass. One frustrated passing cyclist slapped the trunk of Foggo's car. After the two exchanged words, Foggo responded by knocking him off his bike and punching him in the face. Then, much as he would later lie to others at the CIA about the "cigar bar" cover story for him and JC, Foggo concocted a story that local police officers had fabricated the entire incident as payback for Foggo's having spurned their efforts to solicit a bribe from him. Foggo's superiors and the local officials considered his explanation to be "unrealistic and implausible." Foggo's chief of station was convinced that Foggo was lying to him. Foggo's assault on one of its citizens so outraged that nation that officials there filed a Diplomatic Protest with the U.S. Ambassador.

We've got a feeling there's plenty more like that out there. But as always with this stuff, we could use your help. So take a look through the court documents, and let us know, in comments or emails, what else is in there...

The government's sentencing memo and its appendix are here and here. Prosecutors' response to Foggo's sentencing memo is here.

From the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2009/02/cia_foggo_favors_sentencing_th.html?hpid=news-col-blog

CIA Officer Was A 'Con Man,' Prosecutors Say
POSTED: 12:52 PM ET, 02/25/2009 by Derek Kravitz
TAGS: CIA, contracting, federal courts

Check out the court filing on the Foggo case below

As lifelong best friends, CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and California defense contractor Brent Wilkes did nearly everything together. Their families went on overseas vacations to Scotland and Hawaii, shared meals at Washington restaurants, such as the Capital Grille, and frequently exchanged e-mails and phone calls about their various goings-on.
Foggo


But prosecutors also found that for more than three years, Foggo, the No. 3 official at the agency, steered millions of government contracts to Wilkes in exchange for gifts and favors -- for "a taste of the life that awaited him" after he retired from the agency, according to court documents (PDF) released this week.

In those same court documents, Foggo is likened to a charismatic "con man" who was never "truly honest." Prosecutors say a sense of "narcissism and patriotism" drove his actions; a former supervisor of Foggo, who knew him for decades, said he "was seriously flawed, ethically and morally, who would cut corners to achieve his aims."

For his part, Foggo blamed Wilkes and said his crimes constituted a "lapse in judgment."

...

From ProPublica:
http://www.propublica.org/article/foggo-addendum-in-their-own-words

Foggo Addendum: In Their Own Words
by Marcus Stern, ProPublica - February 25, 2009 2:32 pm EST


AP Photo

Court documents released this week in advance of Thursday’s sentencing of former CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Dustin Foggo provide a remarkable glimpse into the mindset of the key players in a sordid drama involving corruption that reached the highest levels of the CIA and touched the agency’s most sensitive and secret covert operations in the war on terror.

Depositions show that Foggo had his sights set on succeeding Randy "Duke" Cunningham in Congress, even after the former war hero and champion of defense spending had fallen from grace, bilking – for years – the very same defense budgets that he defended passionately from the well of the House. They show that Foggo was appointed to the CIA’s No. 3 post despite a checkered history with the agency. And they show that even as Foggo was defrauding the government the agency gave him three monetary performance awards worth a total of $24,280.

Here is a link to documents filed in Foggo’s case. The depositions can be found here. But if you don’t have time to read all the depositions, here is a trail of illuminating highlights.

...

From Associated Press:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hSoMDsA5PakZOd1o1yx655Egw9ngD96IQ8R80

Feds: Misconduct by CIA's Foggo spanned decades

By MATTHEW BARAKAT – 1 hour ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former CIA agent rose to the agency's No. 3 rank despite a record of misconduct that stretched over 20 years, prosecutors said, until his career came to an end with his conviction in a bribery scheme.

In court papers, prosecutors describe how Kyle "Dusty" Foggo was investigated in the late 1980s for punching a bicyclist in a traffic dispute and for numerous relationships with foreign women that could have compromised security.

Foggo rose through the ranks to become the agency's executive director from 2004 to 2006. Had his crimes gone uncovered, he planned to retire and run for Congress in San Diego, according to prosecutors.

Instead, Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.
...

From TPM Muckraker:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/former_counter-intel_chief_flabbergasted_by_gosss.php

Former Counter-Intel Chief "Flabbergasted" By Goss's Choice Of Foggo For Number 3 Post
By Zachary Roth - February 25, 2009, 2:55PM

I was flabbergasted when Mr. Foggo was selected as the Executive Director. I found Director Goss's selection to be quite revealing, that Mr. Goss would be taken in by a "con man" like Mr. Foggo.

That's the view, as reflected in the appendix to the government's sentencing memo, of Jim Olson, a former CIA chief of counter-intelligence, who also served as CIA's chief of station at several different overseas locations, and supervised Foggo. (Olson is identified only as "John Doe #2", but details of his career and current employment make clear that it's him.)

That sounds like an indictment of Porter Goss, who has already taken his fair share of lumps in the Foggo matter, after appointing Foggo to be the agency's number 3 man.

But it's also worth considering that Olson admits in the memo that he too was impressed by Foggo, recommending him for continued employment -- even though he knew about the incident in which Foggo assaulted a pedestrian, and about the fact that Foggo had failed to report contacts with numerous foreign women, as CIA rules require (for good reason.)

...

From Center on Immigration Studies:
http://cis.org/node/1061

Immigration Fraud, on Top of Everything Else
By Jerry Kammer, February 25, 2009

The CIA's former No. 3 official awaits sentencing tomorrow in Virginia on federal charges that he conspired with a life-long friend to bilk the government out of millions of dollars and forced the CIA to hire his mistress. In their pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors also allege that Kyle "Dusty" Foggo helped facilitate an act of immigration fraud.

Prosecutors claim that Foggo, who in 2006 was forced to resign as the CIA's Executive Director, enlisted a private contractor who worked with the CIA "to write a letter falsely purporting to offer a job" to a foreign national so that the foreign national could obtain a visa. Before that bit of deceit, Foggo wrote an e-mail to the contractor's boss, suggesting that they seek some political influence to get the visa. He suggested that "maybe we can get Duke (Congressman Duke Cunningham, R, Calif) to write a joint letter with Cong. (Mary) Bono (D, Calif) . . . .Do you think Duke would join? It would be worth a little campaign help, I'm sure."

The e-mail recipient was Brent Wilkes, the California defense contractor convicted in 2007 of bribing Cunningham for earmarks in defense appropriations bills. Cunningham resigned in disgrace in 2005, after press disclosures of his corrupt ties to another, now-convicted defense contractor. Cunningham is serving an eight-year sentence in a federal prison in Arizona.

Prosecutors say Foggo received "lavish vacations, extravagant meals, and expensive gifts" in return for rigging inflated, multi-million dollar contracts for Wilkes despite Wilkes' lack of qualifications. Their memo details Wilkes' squandering of $88,000 on a vacation trip they took to Scotland: "That trip cost Wilkes $12,000 in private jet flights, over $4,000 in tickets to the Lion King musical, and over $44,000 for a stay at the Pitcastle estate, which offered trout fishing on hill lochs, salmon fishing on the River Tay, clay pigeon shooting, archery and a seven-person staff."

...

Interesting on this last article. When did Mary Bono join the Democratic Party? :)

[Why Syzygy]

1. k/r .. So many of us are wanting stuff revealed and held accountable

so, I hope more DUers will pay attention to this.

[spanone]

2. knr

[Warpy]

3. The "national security" issue invovles laundering DOD

taxpayer dollars into bribes, kickbacks, campaign contributions, PAC funding, and all sorts of other things that are completely unrelated to defending this nation against anybody but Democrats.

It's a "national security" issue because Wilkes and Foggo represent only the very tip of a very large iceberg of laundering taxpayer dollars at the government's largest agency into party and personal money.

Were the true scope of this stuff ever to become fully known, or even fully suspected, the Pentagon would likely find its budget slashed in half, something we need to do but they want to turn into political suicide.

[valerief]

6. I thought that's what DOD funds were for. It's a slush fund for the criminals that run the country.

[Why Syzygy]

8. LOL

:rofl: .. I see the ghost of Stanford in this stuff.

[cascadiance]

7. I have a theory that's just speculation on my part, but would be why this coverup is bipartisan...

There have been reports (largely covered up in this country with the exception of McClatchy Bureau) that the allegations that North Koreans were responsible for our counterfeit "super dollars" that lead us to get newer currency recently were false, and that in fact it was the CIA that was making these counterfeits and blaming them on the North Koreans, and using it to fund black operations (instead of having to weasel them from someplace else outside of the view of congress like they did in Iran Contra days).

The way they've handled folks like Dusty Foggo, Brent Wilkes, and Thomas Kontogiannis, who are all part of money laundering operations, and Foggo a high level official in the CIA, makes me wonder if they aren't connected to this if this is true.

Many of these sources are from conspiracy sites and one has to take their comments with a grain of salt. But Deutche Allemaigne and McClatchey DC News Bureau aren't sources to sneeze at.

Some links:

http://www.nowpublic.com/german_paper_reports_cia_counterfeiting_us_currency

Alternet story

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/24521.html

[HillbillyBob]

13. some of us have been aware of this shit for years but everytime we bring it

up we are shouted down or in some cases threatened with arrest.
We need to dismantle the entire DoD, NSA, FBI, and CIA and hold them in gitmo and pick it apart bit by bit and question every one of them until they spill their guts ever last bit, then decide just how bad the treason is and how far it goes.We should have some hard questions for Justice and Congress too.
They hide shit under national security to keep their secret theft of billions.
As you said.
edited to add,
We also need to get to the bottom of a lot of murder, blackmail, extortion too.

[undergroundpanther]

14. I agree with you 100 percent

They need to tell all.What they have done,stolen,ruined,covered up and hurt. Every single bit of it. Most of these fuckers are psychopaths ,con men and narcissistic pieces of shit anyway.Weasels that will hide the evil they do unless there are people willing to force them to tell it all.
And if it ends them up sentenced to die, in a prison for life or in chains in the Hauge..It is vital that all of what was done in the dark must be revealed to the light of day,and it must never be tolerated again and bad personalities kept away from money power and secrets if this country wants to really change..Our government has been hijacked by bad people and they must be held accountable.

[tanyev]

4. Foggo claimed credit for getting his mistress's boss fired

In addition to his penchant for road rage, Dusty Foggo certainly seems to have known how to treat a lady.

The sentencing memo tells how, after Foggo moved from overseas to the CIA's headquarters -- leaving his wife and family behind -- he managed to get a Langley job for his mistress too. Then, when the mistress's performance was criticized by a highly-decorated supervisor, Foggo got the supervisor fired, telling his mistress she could "thank him later."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/foggo_claimed_credit_for_getting_mistresss_boss_fi.php?ref=fp1

[OnyxCollie]

5. K&R.

Off topic: Does anyone have trouble printing the pages at TPM? Every time I try to print something there, I get a blank page. I can't even save it as a PDF. I tried getting an account there, thinking it would help, but when I went to log on for the first time I got a message saying, "Your account has been suspended. See system administrator." followed by lots of spam in my inbox.

[Why Syzygy]

10. Ditto.

I haven't tried printing, but the account and email events happened.

[Qutzupalotl]

9. No mention of poker parties or prostitutes?

Is that withheld for security reasons?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194720,00.html

[cascadiance]

11. Perhaps that's to protect Porter Goss, who still is in the business of "ethics" now...

My guess is he was at the center of that mess with those poker parties at the Watergate...

I still wonder why Nancy Pelosi went along with Boehner to put him as co-chair of the new Office of Congressional Ethics. Seems like putting the fox in charge of the hen house!

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/07/porter-goss-on.html

[cascadiance]

12. Hmm.. Just now released that Porter Goss knew of Foggo's troubles before hiring him!

Perhaps there is some effort to try and protect Goss...

From:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/report_goss_knew_of_foggos_shady_past.php

Report: Goss Knew Of Foggo's Shady Past
By Zachary Roth - February 25, 2009, 5:23PM

A great nugget from Laura Rozen...

Source said that Goss lied in his testimony, that he was not aware about the problems with Foggo when he hired him for executive director. He said that a major fight had broken out between Goss staffer Patrick Murray and then associate deputy director of operations Michael Sulick about the Foggo hiring. "Murray told ADDO/Counterintelligence Mary Margaret that if Dusty's background got out to the press, they would know who to come looking for. Mary Margaret tried to warn them that Dusty Foggo had a problematic counterintelligence file. Sulick defended Mary Margaret. Goss told deputy director of operations Steve] Kappes he had to fire Sulick." After that, Kappes and Sulick quit. "Goss bears major responsibility here," source says. It was finally the "White House tht demanded that Goss fire Dusty and he refused." So they both got fired.

It's not clear whether the fight that the source refers to occurred before or after Foggo's actual hiring. Though the context -- and the source's claim that Goss lied in his testimony -- suggest it was before.

Earlier, we posted Goss's explanation of the circumstances under which he hired Foggo, in which Goss gives the clear impression he believed Foggo to have a clean record when he hired him.

[undergroundpanther]

15. If whomever hires people for "intelligence" ops

is that fucking stupid, no wonder we had them stealing yellow cake bullshit from some high schoolers term paper. Fucking assholes and idiots.Idiots and assholes with high tech weapons,too many guns, loyal fools and a stolen slush fund that is way too big.

[cascadiance]

16. Foggo only gets 3+ years sentence!

And his defense is arguing for probation in light of all of the "good deeds" he did in the CIA (which of course we won't hear about because we can't see "secret stuff")...

This is BS! Folks like Foggo are really getting off for what likely were truly criminal and damaging acts. He must really have some goods on us that he's using to get this kind of hands-off treatment.

From AP:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hSoMDsA5PakZOd1o1yx655Egw9ngD96JCDQ05

Former CIA exec gets more than 3 years in prison
55 minutes ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former high-ranking CIA official has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for a fraud scheme in which he steered procurement contracts to an old friend.

The 37-month sentence for Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who held the CIA's No. 3 rank from 2004 to 2006, matched prosecutors' recommendations. He pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud.

Defense lawyers had argued for probation and cited Foggo's good deeds over two decades with the CIA, many of which remain classified.
Prosecutors said Foggo received tens of thousands of dollars worth of lavish gifts and vacations in exchange for helping his old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, obtain no-bid contracts.

They also say Foggo forced the CIA to hire his mistress for a six-figure job for which she was unqualified.