New Foggo Indictment, via the AP. In November 2005, I broke Foggo's connection to the Cunningham case:

So far most of the attention in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham corruption case has focused on his guilty plea Monday admitting to charges that he conspired to take $2.4 million in bribes (cash, carpets, antiques and real estate), evade taxes, commit mail fraud and wire fraud, and steer Defense department contracts to those who enriched him. Those defense contracts were facilitated by Cunningham’s position on the House Appropriations committee subcommittee on defense – in effect, the subcommittee that writes the checks for Pentagon contracts.

But intelligence sources tell the Prospect that not to be overlooked is Cunningham’s position on the House Permanent Select Intelligence committee (HIPSI), and CIA contracts Cunningham may have helped steer to benefactors, particularly to companies chaired by Cunningham’s alleged co-conspirator Brent Wilkes, CEO of San Diego-based defense contractor ADCS Inc., and a major Republican campaign contributor.

The Prospect [has learned] that Wilkes’ company received at least one CIA contract – to supply CIA employees in Iraq with water, early into the invasion. Sources say such a contract may have been facilitated not only by the hundreds of thousands of dollars Wilkes steered to Cunningham, but also by the fact that Wilkes’ university roommate and long time friend is a recently promoted top CIA manager, K. “Dusty” Foggo. A career CIA operations support officer, Foggo was somewhat controversially appointed by incoming CIA director Porter Goss -- Cunningham’s former colleague on the House intelligence committee -- last year to be the executive director of the Agency, in effect, the CIA’s #3 official and day to day administrative manager of the $5 billion agency. (See Jason Vest’s profile and this Walter Pincus piece for background). An intelligence source says that Wilkes even jokes about Foggo having a virtual office (“a playpen”) in Wilkes’ company’s offices in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Chantilly, Virginia. Wilkes’ attorney Michael Lipman wouldn’t comment on whether government investigators were reviewing any CIA contracts ADCS might have received, he also declined to say whether Wilkes was cooperating with the investigation. Wilkes has not yet been indicted. [...]

And I first reported the name of one Wilkes controlled company through which the CIA funnelled contracts here:

...CIA contracts are not public, and there's an added veil of secrecy and opaqueness to the “black” contracting world. Cunningham bragged about his ability to help influence the procuring of contracts from this secretive Congressional source in a letter to San Diego contractors, saying he was in a position to influence the awarding of “black” contracts after he was assigned to the House Intelligence committee in 2001. An individual who has been identified in press reports as Co-conspirator One in the Cunningham indictment, San Diego-based defense contractor Brent Wilkes, who has not yet been charged, has more than a dozen companies in his corporate empire. Efforts by journalists to sort out which companies might have received CIA contracts have gotten nowhere -- until now.

On December 8, the Prospect received an anonymous tip about CIA contracts: The name of a Wilkes-affiliated company that allegedly had received some of them. The company is called Archer Logistics, which is, according to its website, a US-based “open source acquisition group … uniquely positioned to execute rapid acquisition requests, provide immediate delivery channels and augment post-sales support. ...Archer Logistics has also developed a unique delivery structure that can provide turnaround times of 24 hours in cases of extreme need.” (Its name is similar to a Senate-registered, Wilkes-affiliate company Archer Defense, “a defense logistics and technology company,” but not, apparently, the same company.) According to its website, incorporation documents in the Commonwealth of Virginia and public-online address books, Archer Logistics is located in the same Chantilly, Virginia address that houses the Virginia offices of ADCS, Inc. Neither Archer Logistics nor the ADCS Chantilly office answered the phone, and neither has responded to numerous messages.

When asked about whether Archer Logistics was receiving CIA contracts, a spokesman for the CIA told the Prospect on December 9 that “as a rule, the CIA does not publicly discuss who may or may not have a contractual relationship with the Agency.” Previously, the CIA had indicated that other Wilkes-affiliated companies – ADCS, Pure Aqua Technologies, Perfect Wave Technologies, Group W Transport – did not have contracts with the Agency.

Incorporation documents from the state of Virginia show that the president of Archer Logistics is Joel G. Combs, an individual who, according to lobbying registration documents filed with the Senate, is a registered lobbyist for Wilkes' lobbying arm, Group W Advisors. ... Sources familiar with the company tell the Prospect, and California birth records indicate, that Combs is a relative of Brent Wilkes. ...

And first reported Wilkes' negotiations with Foggo about providing the Agency a covert air transport company, a very large contract that was not ultimately realized due to increasing investigative scrutiny:

The Cunningham Case, the CIA and Off-the-Books Planes. As I have already reported, alleged Cunningham co-conspirator #1 Brent Wilkes already got a couple smallish CIA contracts ($5 million to $10 million/year deals each), through a company nominally owned by his nephew and former ADCS and Group W Advisors employee, Joel G. Combs, called Archer Logistics. As I reported in December, one contract dates to 2003 and was to supply water to CIA personnel in Iraq. But sources tell me far larger CIA contracts were in the pipeline, until Wilkes was revealed to be involved in the Cunningham corruption case. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source indicates. "There were several more opportunities on the board when the federal investigation came down on Wilkes. Opportunities worth much more than the $5M or $10 million/year deals Wilkes was used to. The FBI probably knows about these from the raids they conducted, but I wonder if they have shared that information with the CIA." The last point refers to the CIA Inspector General investigation of the CIA contracts Wilkes'-associated firms received, including, the probe will examine, any directed by Wilkes' best friend, Dusty Foggo, the executive director of the Agency.

And what were the forthcoming contracts for? According to a source, they were to create and run a secret plane network, for whatever needs the CIA has for secret fleets of planes. Presumably, that might include "extraordinary renditions," e.g. to fly terror suspects off the radar to locations for interrogation. "I Imagine that since their whole flying operation has been outed, it makes it tough to operate clandestine flights," the source explained. "I bet it would cost a bundle to set up a whole new operation that no one knew about ... How do they operate a secret fleet of aircraft now that everyone knows about the planes we have? If I were high up in the CIA, this would be a big priority for me, and I would need a solution outside the normal range of solutions." Enter trusted contractor Brent Wilkes and Archer Logistics, and perhaps a whole new front company to be invented for the purpose. [...]

Update: ABC's Justin Rood reports that the latest Foggo indictment charges that the "former top CIA official pressured agency employees into hiring his alleged mistress as an in-house attorney."

Posted by Laura at May 21, 2008 01:00 AM