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Here's another company, Global Transporation Systems, Inc. (GTS Inc.), that is registered in the Senate as being a lobbying client of Brent Wilkes' Group W Advisors. What GTS does is apparent from the website (freight, logistics, etc.) What kind of government contracts have they received? ***(SEE 'LATE UPDATE' BELOW) And perhaps most important, what really is the relationship between GTS' ownership (lead owner Richard Wenzel) and Brent Wilkes (identified as co-conspirator 1 in the Cunningham indictment)? As you can see from the Senate registration of Group W Advisors' other clients, many of them are themselves Wilkes' affiliates or co-addressed to subsidiaries of the Wilkes Corporation. I don't know if that's the case with GTS Inc., but it's the pattern.
Keep your tips coming. (Thx to N.)
Update: They have some contracts in Iraq.
Update II: Another irony. Was talking to a staffer for the House appropriations committee today. He told me it was "patently absurd" that the committee members, some of whom themselves received generous, legal contributions from Wilkes (and Wade, and their PACs) would be trying to sneak in any recommendations that would benefit Wilkes' less high profile companies in the appropriations bill headed to the president in the next few days. It seemed absurd to me too. But he then said, that the programs for which Wilkes' ADCS originally got contracts, and for which MZM originally got contracts -- the digitization which originally the Pentagon thought it didn't need? Apparently the Pentagon has requested a quadrupling of the budget for that newly discovered need. Who will benefit, if not ADCS? What was the name of the company Duncan Hunter liked better again?
Update III: I talked to someone from GTS Inc. The company has been around since the 80s. It flies freight under contracts from the government and other clients, using its own planes and outside charters. This guy wasn't even aware that the company had a DC lobbyist. But it's a bit of an anomaly in terms of Group W-registered clients in that it kind of seems like a real company that is not owned by Brent Wilkes or co-housed within the main Wilkes corporation umbrella. Still curious.
Here's a wild guess. As Wilkes' various companies started to get larger and larger defense contracts to do things, it didn't have the in house capacity to really do many of those things it was getting government money for. In other words, when your shell companies have to produce, where do you go? Did it hire out? Subcontract to some place that had that capacity -- some place like GTS? Partner? I am not sure. Trying to think aloud.
Late Update (12/12/2005): Spoke with the president of GTS, Richard Wenzel. While GTS hired Group W Advisors as a government relations advisor in late January 2004 in order to explore possible DoD opportunities for its freight forwarding business, GTS ended the relationship in March 2004, Wenzel said. They have no relationship, no partnership, no involvement with Group W Advisors or any other Wilkes' company beyond that. GTS has been around since 1987, it is a freight forwarding company with a lot of business in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, transporting freight from humanitarian relief to high end retail goods to heavy equipment. GTS has no business for the US government in Iraq, Wenzel said. Wenzel had met Brent Wilkes at a private dinner in Washington DC in 2003, they had discussed their lines of work, including Wilkes' defense work and Wilkes' charitable foundation which benefited San Diego's Children's Hospital and a group that supported veterans and their families (Wenzel and his wife are involved with supporting DC's Children's Hospital). Wenzel was interviewing a few DC gov't relations firms shortly thereafter, to see about seeking DoD opportunities for GTS, and he chose Wilkes' company Group W advisors, in part for its competitive price. He had no idea that meant he was hiring a "lobbyist." He met with Michael Mack and Joel Combs. He said he terminated the contract with Group W shortly thereafter, in March 2004, because Wilkes/Group W allegedly "didn't do what he said he was going to do," according to Wenzel. He would not specify what that was. He said he's dumbfounded by what he's reading in the papers about the Wilkes/Cunningham case.