The GOP One-Stop Shop for Domestic Dirty-Tricks

MZM: Corrupted Intelligence and Politics

It's the entrepreneurial offspring of the commercialization of intelligence. We now see private contractors bribing Congressmen, operating spy agencies, and staffing the commissions charged with investigating their own abuses. Behold, the one-stop shop for political dirty-tricks.

It has emerged in recent years amidst the mania for gov't outsourcing of intelligence, particularly information technology services related to electronic surveillance. Private DoD and Homeland Security contractors have a vested interest in locating and amplifying "threats". This creates a monetary temptation for tailoring the intelligence product to match the expectations of government clients, including the outright falsification of intelligence.

Take, for instance, Wade Mitchell's MZM, a corrupt defense contracting firm tied in with the Cunningham bribery scandal, which recieved millions to develop surveillance technologies for the Pentagon's new domestic spy agencies. TPM Muckraker reports the following disturbing developments:

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On background, it should be noted that Laura Rozen's War&Piece column of December 11, 2005, "Wade, Wilkes and Bad Intelligence?" identified Mitchell Wade's MZM defense contracting firm as a culprit in faulty intelligence generation that led to the invasion of Iraq. http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003244.html

A source cited by Rozen identified MZM as the private contractor cited for support of an errant CIA Iraq WMD assessment used to justify the Bush Administration's argument for war. An MZM analysis erroneously concluded that aluminum tubes ordered by Saddam Hussein were intended for use in a clandestne nuclear fuel enrichment progam that didn't exist. Now, Rosen comes up with the extraordinary find that consultants working for MZM and other intelligence contractors staffed the Robb-Silberman Commission that investigated the faulty Iraq WMD findings.

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Did MZM, Other Companies Staff Bush Intel Panel?
By Justin Rood - March 22, 2006, 9:26 AM
At War and Piece, Laura Rozen finds more indicators that MZM's contracts with the White House were for three professional staffers on the Robb-Silberman WMD commission.http://www.warandpiece.com/...

First, the MZM contracts list their "place of performance" as Arlington, VA -- where the commission's offices were -- not Washington, D.C., where the White House is known to be. Second, Rozen found similar arrangements between the White House and other intelligence contractors, including Booz-Allen Hamilton and SAIC. Laura and I have both confirmed various staffers worked for SAIC.

Those companies have increased their intelligence business in recent years, thanks to U.S. spy agencies struggling to spend even greater budgets on new hires and new technology.http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/...


Further down in Rood's Blog we see that Mitchell Wade's MZM has received some $16 million in contracts to conduct domestic spying, as well as a quarter million from the White House for unspecified "intelligence" activities, along with funding related to an Iranian exile group.


Mitchell Wade, former CEO of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to several conspiracy and bribery charges a few weeks ago in connection with the Cunningham scandal. But a little-noticed piece of his history goes into one of the most sensitive domestic spying operations we have heard of to date: the Pentagon's Virginia-based Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA).

Wade got over $16 million in contracts with CIFA by bribing Duke Cunningham, who forced earmarks in to Defense appropriations bills on his behalf. Furthermore, Wade's second-in-command was a consultant to the Pentagon on standing up the operation.

In its brief life -- it was created in 2002 -- CIFA has had trouble keeping its nose clean. Despite the ink that's been spilled on the center, little is actually known about what it does, and how MZM serviced it.

Here's what we know: After the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon used its massive budget and urgent sense of mission to push into areas of intelligence it had once left to others. Domestic intelligence was one of those areas. DoD created CIFA in 2002 to become a joint center for "force protection" intelligence work at DoD, mainly anti-terrorism.

What's "force protection?" Pentagonese for "carte blanche." In encompasses protection for bases, troops and equipment. And the water supply. The electrical grid. Highways. Contractors, their suppliers -- the list goes on. Which leaves CIFA with a mandate to gather information on, well, just about anything and anybody it wants.http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/...


One wonders what safeguards, if any, might be built into a system where oversight is performed by the business partners of private sector CIA, DHS and DoD security contractors? This problem goes far beyond the old "revolving door" of executive exchange between DoD and defense contractors. In an environment where warrantless spying is commonplace, how much confidence are we supposed to have in the integrity and efficacy of such counter-terrorism entrepreneurs? As the MZM affair shows, they appear to be tailor-made for partisan graft and political dirty-tricks.

2006. Mark G. Levey
(modified by author)

Staying on top of the whole BFEE picture is never easy.

Have you noticed in recent days that attention to intelligence and foreign policy issues has wained? Also, a lot of the regulars don't seem to be around. It's almost like everyone's exhausted and dreading the next turn of the cards. Or, is it just me, and my writing has gone stale?

I feel like a barroom musician wondering why the tip jar is going unfilled.

social activist Dems.

Understandable - it's not like media reports on any of the hardcore stuff, so it's harder to get excited by something that even KO fears reporting.

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