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Wade, Wilkes and Bad Intelligence? For the past few days, I've been chasing the dark corners of one of the Brent Wilkes-Duke Cunningham rabbit holes, the under the radar contracting company that sources say Wilkes set up under the leadership of his nephew Joel G. Combs to solicit CIA contracts. [Wilkes, you will remember, is alleged co-conspirator one in the indictment of Congressman Duke Cunningham for receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from defense contractors in exchange for steering US government contracts to those who bribed him. Co-conspirator two is Mitchell Wade, formerly chair of MZM, Inc. The Washington Post earlier reported that Wade, who comes from a Navy intelligence background, used to work as a consultant for Wilkes' ADCS, Inc. before starting MZM, Inc.] Other sources had earlier indicated that one of Wilkes' companies had a CIA contract to bring water to CIA personnel in Iraq, and perhaps others, but hadn't known the specific company's name. Found it elsewhere. (Thanks also to reader Chris Cruse whose mastery of genealogical information provided me the documentation to verify that Joel Gaylen Combs, the president of the alleged Wilkes-associated CIA contractor, Archer Logistics, is the son of Patricia [nee Wilkes] Combs -- Brent Wilkes' older sister).
As I was nailing down the last edits for this modest piece in order to get the information out there sooner than later, the frighteningly brilliant eRiposte of the Left Coaster emailed me an analysis of a related issue -- concerning one of Mitchell Wade's contracts with an army intelligence outfit -- that seemed so incredible on its face, I couldn't quite believe the two things were connected. It's not clear they are. It's a suggestive theory, anyway, that is certainly worthy of more high powered reporting.
It's based on eRiposte's analysis of a Walter Pincus article from July. What begins as an article about a gross example of conflict of interest -- MZM hired the son of the executive director of the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center two months after MZM was awarded an NGIC contract and shortly before it got a far bigger one -- further down reveals that NGIC is at the center of the infamous Iraq aluminum tubes controversy. The NGIC claimed wrongly the tubes must be for a nuclear centrifuge. As Pincus wrote:
According to the timeline established in the Pincus article, in September 2002, the NGIC determined that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "'highly unlikely' to be used for rocket motor cases," e.g. they were likely to be for a nuclear weapons program -- which was "completely wrong" the Silberman-Robb report found. Then in October 2002, MZM got its first orders from the NGIC, to "perform a seven-week, $194,000 analysis of 'FIRES', a computer program concept to collect blueprints of facilities worldwide to create an intelligence database," Pincus reported. Then in December 2002, according to the Pincus report, MZM hired the NGIC executive director's son, William Scott Rich III. Shortly thereafter, "MZM received multimillion-dollar orders to continue work on FIRES and other programs," Pincus reports.The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq's weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.
The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for "gross failure" in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was "completely wrong" when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket motor cases.
That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.
So is this all about conflict of interest, corruption, bribery, contracting improprieties? Or is there something else going on here? It's not clear. But guess what. The CIA hired a contractor in September 2002 (the month before the NGIC gave MZM its first orders) who also claimed the tubes were for a nuclear centrifuge, eRiposte pointed out to me in the email. Who was that contractor? The Senate Select Intelligence report has redacted it. Here's what eRiposte writes:
It's obviously unproven. But the implications are truly frightening. Could a contractor accused of bribing US government officials have contributed to the corruption of the intelligence by which the US went to war? I don't know who the contractor was, but it would seem this is a subject worthy of investigative scrutiny....I wanted to bring this to your attention because one of the issues I was planning to discuss in my ongoing series on WMDgate related to the deliberate fabrications and/or misrepresentations by CIA/NGIC on the aluminum tubes issue using a mysterious contractor to “bolster” their claims. The Senate (SSCI) report points out that in September 2002 CIA hired a [REDACTED] contractor who conveniently “confirmed” the fraudulent tubes-as-centrifuges story for the CIA (and NGIC).
Here’s the Senate Report on this mysterious contractor:
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( ) Contributing to the CIA's analysis for the extensive September intelligence assessment was an analysis performed by an individual from DELETED who were working under contract with the CIA at the time to provide broad-based technical advice DELETED. The CIA WINPAC analyst, DELETED, requested in September 2002 that they perform an analysis of the tubes. SENTENCE DELETED( )The contractors told Committee staff that the CIA provided them with a stack of intelligence data and analysis on the Iraqi aluminum tube procurements on September 16, 2002. All of the information was provided by the CIA and the contractors told Committee staff that they did not discuss the data with any agencies other than the CIA. They were provided with NGIC's analysis of the tubes, but said they were not briefed by nor did they ask to speak to NGIC or DOE analysts. One contractor said, "This was internal to the agency." One of the contractors said before joining DELETED he had been given a tutorial on 81-mm rockets by a DOE analyst, but said that the conversation was "pretty meaningless to me because the rest of the issue had not bubbled up at that point." A DOE analyst told Committee staff that he also discussed the issue with the contractor in May of 2001. The contractor produced a paper on September 17, 2002, one day after receiving the information, that said the team concluded, "that the tubes are consistent with design requirements of gas centrifuge rotors, but due to the high-strength material and excessively tight tolerances, the tubes seem inconsistent with design requirements of rocket motor casings." The report referenced NGIC's analysis that the material and quantity of the tubes were inconsistent with rocket motor applications. The report said that while the dimensions "possibly" were suitable for rockets, the tolerances were too stringent and the pressure test requirements were too high.
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What the Wilkes-Wade-Cunningham larger story reveals is the vulnerability of the US government appropriations and contracting process -- even its most sensitive elements - to unscrupulous people, whose chief interests are not necessarily motivated by concern for the well being of the United States, but, in this case, apparently, self-enrichment. It's really the story of a security breach, and how easily penetrated were two of the most national security-sensitive Congressional committees by those who targeted them and others for just that purpose. And they were targeted in the classic ways spies target recruits -- by first identifying who would be useful, and then identifying their weaknesses (money? alcohol? other ways?). In other words, it's a counter-intelligence story too. (Jason Vest and I reported on that angle in a subscription only National Journal piece this past week; what's most curious is that while the chair of the House Intel committee Peter Hoekstra is investigating the Cunningham case as a potential counterintelligence concern, the chair of the other committee on which Cunningham sat, Jerry Lewis (R-Ca) of the Appropriations committee, is reviewing Cunningham's programmatic recommendations only "informally," according to a spokesman for the committee. Why is that?)
Keep your tips coming. And all credit to eRiposte for identifying the possibility. I think he's truly memorized the whole SSCI Phase I report. And this San Diego Union Trib piece is still the Bible on all things Wilkes.
[This post has been revised.]