investigators

Knight Ridder has broken open a story that spans over a couple big scandals. Those scandals are Randy Cunningham and the spying on anti-war activists:

A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

I guess it all boils down to this - if you want someone to do something illegal you better find someone already breaking the law. The corruption from this administration never stops.

The press conference with officials investigating Jack Abramoff has just
ended. It was rather interesting but short lived in comparison to that of
Patrick Fitzgerald's conference when he indicted Scooter Libby.

It was brought out that in the terms of today's deal with Abramoff he will
face between 9 1/2 and 11 years in prison but that could change depending on how
much he cooperates with investigators and how truthful he is.

An interesting point brought up by the assistant attorney general in charge
of the investigation was in the pure number of corruption cases their division
now handles. She stated there has been a 90% increase in these cases over the
past three years. That just goes to show you that some dirty individuals are
attempting to sell off our democracy and everything our forefathers fought and
died for. It is all for nothing more than greed.

Raw Story has reported that Fitzgerald is in fact seeking indictments in the
leak case according to their sources.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided to seek indictments in
the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and has submitted at least
one to the grand jury, those close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.

Fitzgerald will seek at least two indictments, the sources say. They note
that it remains to be seen whether the grand jury will approve the charges.

Those familiar with the case state that Fitzgerald likely will not seek
indictments that assert officials leaked Plame's name illegally. Rather,
they say that he will focus charges in the arena of lying to investigators.

Story continues

here.

From the reports about the make up of the grand jury, the indictments should
not be that hard to get. There are 23 people on it and it requires 12, or a
majority of the votes. The jury is also composed mainly of middle class African
American women. Most likely if he is seeking indictments then they will come
out. Of course he could get the indictments and also issue a scathing report of
other involvement that might provoke Congress into taking up the issue further.
This story is developing fast.

So now the standard has been lowered. Anyone breaking the
law will be fired from the administration. This varies quite a bit from the
comments the President made in 2003 stating that anyone involved would be fired.
So why the change now?

I don’t think it could be because the President found out
Karl Rove and Scooter Libby is involved. I am sure he already knew that, and if
not then he would have a certain feeling of betrayal that they never informed
him of their involvement. Actually looking at the new change it seems to provide
even more security to Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

The process going on now is to determine if a law had
possibly been broken. In other words, the federal grand jury is kind of acting
like investigators. This is one of the processes that make violation of federal
law a long and tedious process. If they find that there is enough evidence to
bring charges forward, then you got to go through the entire criminal case. This
means that even if Karl Rove and/or Scooter Libby are charged with a crime, it
could be years until we find out if they are innocent or guilty. In other words,
it provides them job security that will most likely last throughout the
remainder of the President’s term.