Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker has the latest on Michael Hayden, the General who would be CIA chief:
While director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden contracted the services of a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, according to two former employees of the company.
Hayden, President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA, contracted with MZM Inc. for the services of Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of the company, the sources say. MZM was owned and operated by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with $1.4 million in money and gifts. Wade has also reportedly told investigators he helped arrange for prostitutes to entertain the disgraced lawmaker, and he continues to cooperate with a federal inquiry into the matter.King has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities. However, federal records show he contributed to some of Wade's favored lawmakers, including $6000 to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and $4000 to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).
Before joining MZM in December 2001, King served under Hayden as the NSA's associate deputy director for operations, and as head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.King worked at NSA Headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, in 2004 and 2005, both sources told me. "King was out there working on same floor as Hayden," one former employee with firsthand knowledge of the arrangement said. "He was doing special projects for Hayden as an MZM employee." Neither former employee knew details of King's work for Hayden; one said he thought he was doing "special projects" for the director, while the other speculated it was "high-ranking advisory work."The NSA did not immediately respond to my request for comment. Hayden left the NSA in April 2005 to take the post of Deputy Director of National Intelligence. The DNI office referred my call on the matter to the NSA.As an MZM employee, King was involved in a number of controversial projects. In 2002, he was a key adviser to the team creating CIFA, the Pentagon's domestic surveillance operation. In 2004, he was one of three MZM staffers who worked on the White House Robb-Silberman Commission, which recommended expanding CIFA's powers.
NSA is home to its own controversial project, of course -- the post-9/11 warrantless domestic wiretapping operation known as the "terrorist surveillance program." There is no indication that King has been involved in that project. King was Mitchell Wade's successor at MZM, which has since been renamed Athena Innovative Systems, according to Rood. And according to Rood's reporting, King could very well be implicated in the metastasizing Cunningham scandals, including assisting in the cover-up of illegal "straw contributions" to good old Katherine Harris.
Meanwhile, ABC News' "The Blotter" blog is reporting that Goss' bad hire, CIA number three man "Dusty" Foggo will resign under an investigation cloud in the Dukester bribery/hookers in the Watergate controversy. Reports ABC's Christopher Isham:
Sources close to the White House said that Michael Hayden is expected to name Stephen R. Kappes as his deputy. Kappes, a highly respected long-time CIA officer, was Deputy Director of Operations before he resigned less than two months after Porter Goss became Director. Among other accomplishments, Kappes was instrumental in convincing Libyan strongman Moammar Qaddaffi to give up his weapons of mass destruction. The move is designed to stop the hemorrhaging of talent out of the agency, shore up the clandestine services and restore confidence in the institution and its leadership. And Hayden's move also seems designed to quell the uproar among some on Capitol Hill over putting a member of the uniformed military, who ultimately reports to Don Rumsfeld, in charge of the CIA. There had been unsolicited advice coming from some quarters that Hayden, if he gets the job, name a seasoned CIA civilian to be his number two, in order to keep the agency from turning into a de facto tentacle of Don "I'm not in the intelligence business" Rumsfeld's secret "only the intelligence we want to hear" shop. Although some are reporting that with Goss out of the way and Negroponte's boy set to step in at CIA, that has already happened... By the way, the other TPM scuttlebut is that it may not have been Porter Goss who was dabbling in call girls 'longside his poker cards. The culprit may have been yet another bad hire, lovingly known as "Nine Fingers..."
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