Ethically Challenged

by hilzoy

Via TPM, a story from the (San Diego area) North County News:

“Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and a Washington defense contractor continued their silence Tuesday about allegations that the Escondido Republican’s relationship with the contractor may have influenced Cunningham to use his clout to help the company obtain millions of dollars in federal defense contracts. (…)

When a Congressional representative has strong reason to believe that a House member may have committed an ethics violation, any House member may request that the ethics panel investigate the matter. To date, no Congressional representative, Republican or Democrat, has filed such a request pertaining to Cunningham.

While Republicans may have partisan reasons for not asking the House Ethics Committee to investigate Cunningham’s ties to the contractor, Democrats have no such excuse, said Naomi Seligman, deputy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“If Democrats are all about ethics and integrity, how can they not file a complaint?” she asked.”

Josh Marshall is furious:

“Now, I’ve talked to various knowledgable folks. And the reasons are several. The ethics committee is shut down. So there’s no point in filing a complaint. That’s one of the main excuses. But the real reason seems to be this — and the word comes down right from the House leadership: the Democrats don’t want to start filing ethics complaints against the Republicans because they’re afraid the Republicans will turn around and do the same to them.

They apparently want the ‘truce’ of the late 1990s back in force.

And just so we’re clear, it’s awfully hard to think of anything more pathetic than that. (…)

The Republicans are running a wildly corrupt Congress — particularly on the House side. And the Democrats are so shorn of power that they couldn’t even manage to be very corrupt if they tried. After all, this kind of corruption is about selling access and power. And the Democrats have no access or power!

So how is it exactly that the Democrats should be afraid that the Republicans are going to be able to give as good as they get if there’s an ‘ethics war’ in the House when that is the case. Some are just scared. Others, particularly some of the veterans, don’t want to clamp down too much because they’ve spent ten years out of power and they don’t want all the fun to be over if and when they finally get back in the saddle.

If elected Democrats aren’t able or willing to take a stand against the cash-n-carry legislative ethos of Tom DeLay’s Washington they’re simply not doing the job anyone sent them there to do. And they should be replaced too.”

What he said. To be clear: I blame everyone who has not filed an ethics complaint on this one, Democrat or Republican. But while I can, sort of, understand what the Republicans might be thinking, without particularly liking it, I have no idea at all in what universe this is not an obvious thing for Democrats to do. It is, for them, both right and politically expedient. And they should do it now.

You can find your Representative’s email address here. Whether your Rep is a Democrat or a Republican, write and ask him or her to refer Cunningham’s case to the House Ethics Committee. If this isn’t exactly the sort of case the Committee ought to be investigating, I don’t know what is.

Background: If any of you haven’t been following the Cunningham saga, Josh Marshall has been all over it. For starters, Cunningham has gotten subpoenas, but oddly enough not from any of the jurisdictions you’d expect if they concerned his real estate transactions; the defense contractor who sold him the house has resigned, and seems to have forced his employees to contribute to Cunningham and others; not only did that contractor (and major contributor) buy the house Cunningham sold, but the house Cunningham then bought was owned by another major contributor, and the real estate agent who got the commission on the deal was yet another major contributor, who had, oddly enough, never sold a house before. And what, you ask, does the defense contractor who bought Cunningham’s house and then got lots of contracts actually do?

“Little public information exists on what MZM … a name based on the first names of Wade’s children Matthew, Zachary and Morgan … does for the government. Former employees, however, say much of its work is with three defense intelligence operations:

Counter Intelligence Field Activity, a highly secretive program created in 2002 by a Pentagon directive that focuses on gathering intelligence to avert attacks like the ones on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Army National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville, Va., whose mission is to provide soldiers with battlefield intelligence.

The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Ft. Belvoir, Va., just outside Washington, which also provides battlefield intelligence.

MZM has been seeking to increase its contracts with the Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Special Operations Command, both based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., according to former employees.” (cite)

Think of giving out contracts for battlefield intelligence and preventing 9/11 style attacks on the basis of bribes. I mean: if a Representative or Senator feels that he or she absolutely must get rich on bribes, the decent thing would be to move to some committee that oversees spending that lives don’t depend on. Not defense intelligence.

Also: Last time I wrote on this, people asked: would Cunningham have been able to steer contracts to MZM (the contractor)? The answer seems to be yes:

“How much influence can one member of Congress have on the awarding of lucrative defense contracts? Plenty, says an official from a Washington watchdog group, as did a staffer for a member of the powerful House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

“I’m not saying a committee member’s request is the word of God, but it’s pretty darn close,” said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy and communications for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog that carefully reviews the federal budget each year. (…)

It is in the amendments where subcommittee members are able to exert the greatest amount of influence, said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy and communications for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog that carefully reviews the federal budget each year.

“What subcommittee members have influence over are the nitty-gritty details,” Ashdown said Wednesday.

In the current budget year, for example, the subcommittee used amendments to add $12 billion in expenses not requested by the president, Ashdown said.

Subcommittee members also can influence the companies to which contracts are steered, he said.

One way is, “they will write something in the bill, saying: The committee has an interest in X technology for X item, and it just so happens that only one company provides that technology,” Ashdown said.

Or, through an amendment, the subcommittee can directly allocate dollars to a company without a competitive bidding process, he added. (…)

When a subcommittee member wants a pet program included in the budget, he or she can bring pressure to bear on Defense Department officials, Ashdown said.

Asked why Defense Department officials would be overly concerned about their relationships with subcommittee members, Ashdown said that if members want to, they can make life very unpleasant for Defense Department officials. For example, members can speak out publicly about waste within a specific program within the department or a branch of the military, or ask for regular reports on a specific program.

“The service (branches) want to be team players with the committee,” he said. “They don’t want committee members asking questions, or their jobs get much more difficult.”

A staffer for one member of the defense subcommittee spoke with the North County Times on the condition that his name not be cited in this article.

He agreed with Ashdown’s assessment that officials with the Department of Defense and branches of the military try to keep subcommittee members happy by cooperating with their requests for certain programs.

“When a member asks for something, they have to have a very good reason not to give it —- especially with a war going on,” the staff member said. “It’s an old boys’ network.”

He said that every member puts in requests for programs they want to see included.”