Crooks, cronies, have a lock on DoD: A Contractor's Purchase on Power

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According to excerpts of e-mails collected by a Pentagon employee and provided to The Washington Post, one contract official inaccurately thought Wade was a former undersecretary of defense. Another wrote that "Mitch Wade is a force to be reckonned (sic) with . . . he has a lot of perceived power that can slow us down . . . maybe even grind us to a halt."

The recent corruption conviction of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- and Wade's recent guilty plea for bribing him -- focused attention on Congress's practice of "earmarking," or setting aside, federal money for favored interests.

A review of the rise and fall of Wade and his company, based on interviews and MZM and government documents, shows that bribing Cunningham was only one part of Wade's formula for success. His firm, which had no prime federal contracts in fiscal 2002, collected more than $170 million over the next three years, thanks not just to Cunningham, but also to Wade's ability to take practices common among government contractors and push them to the limit.

In a tight labor market, he paid well above the going rate for workers with security clearances -- wages that left others in the government contracting industry puzzled. He freely distributed title and rank, appointing more than 100 vice presidents, executive vice presidents and "senior executive vice presidents" in a company of about 400 people. He aggressively used the "revolving door" between the government's defense and intelligence bureaucracy and the private industry, attracting top talent and often sending new hires back to work on contracts at their former agencies and to try to cultivate new business.
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To ensure that MZM "could milk that account without interruption or interference" from the Defense Department officials who oversaw the contract, Wade enticed them with personal favors, the government said in court documents filed along with Wade's guilty plea. He hired the son of one Defense Department official at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville in early 2002, when MZM was still a subcontractor. In return, the official gave MZM inside information and favorable performance reviews ensuring further work, prosecutors alleged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/19/AR2006031900751_2.html

The defense business is corrupt. Wow! Maybe that is why our Congress loves it so much.