At one point, senior committee aide Michele Lang sent out a staff e-mail describing the program, saying, "HOOAH! Another $5 million of taxpayer money wasted." By 2005, the funding for Wade had swelled to $25 million.
Even Bassett expressed discomfort with Cunningham's manipulation of the system. According to the report, Bassett told senior committee staffers that he had "no confidence that Mitch Wade or anybody he was connected with really knew anything about counterintelligence or could do a good job for the U.S. taxpayer in that area."
Even so, the money continued to be earmarked for Wade's company, MZM, partly because staffers were intimidated by Cunningham.
A bottle of wine
The report suggests that Cunningham began working more closely with Wade, leading to a rift with Brent Wilkes, another contractor accused of bribing the congressman. In one of the more bizarre events described in the report, Cunningham found himself at the same Washington restaurant as Wilkes in late 2004, and sought to smooth things over by sending a bottle of wine to the contractor's table. The report says that Bassett witnessed the scene and said Wilkes "told the waiter to take the wine back to Cunningham or to simply pour it out."
According to the report, Cunningham, in addition to steering money to corrupt contractors, also shared with them classified budget information.
In particular, Wade told a committee aide that he knew "there was an appropriation for the things he had requested Mr. Cunningham support," according to the report.
The report makes only a glancing reference to Goss, saying that early in his tenure he "would make a point of saying that 'We don't do things for constituencies behind the closed doors' " of the intelligence committee. But this policy, the report concludes, "tended to atrophy over time."
The report says senior aides told investigators that they often complied with requests from members without knowing where the requested money would wind up. The report quotes Lang as telling investigators that "a lot of times when we get these [member additions], figuring out what the heck they are ... can be an intelligence thing in and of itself."
The report also explores the committee connections of others swept up in the Cunningham probe, including Bassett, a senior aide who knew Foggo from their time together at the CIA. Bassett has not been accused of any crime.
