Dominoes

It went down to the wire, but soon-to-be ex-US Attorney Carol Lam was true to her word, as she indicted Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes today.

The CIA's former No. 3 official and a defense contractor were charged Tuesday with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering following an investigation that sent former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham to prison.

A federal grand jury returned 11 counts against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, executive director of the CIA until he resigned in May, and his close friend, San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes.

The charges said that Wilkes reserved an office for Foggo near his executive suite in December 2002, and offered Foggo a high-paying position.

Wilkes allegedly paid for Foggo and his family to join Wilkes and his family for a vacation in Scotland in August 2003, paying $12,000 for private jet flights, $4,000 for a helicopter ride to play golf and $44,000 for a stay at an estate.

In the fall of 2003, Foggo allegedly arranged for one of Wilkes' companies to be a middleman in selling bottled water to the CIA. In December of that year, Wilkes introduced Foggo at a party at Wilkes' Poway, Calif., headquarters as a future executive.

Wilkes paid $32,000 for Foggo to join him on a vacation to Hawaii in December 2003 and January 2004, the indictment charges.

Foggo and Wilkes, both 52, allegedly made illegal money transfers of $815,000 in government contract funds from a Virginia shell company to Wilkes' companies.

Foggo and Wilkes can each be punished by up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Wilkes was charged with 25 counts in a separate indictment, including money laundering and bribery.

As I've mentioned, this is the beginning of the road to root out all the corruption in the California Republican Congressional delegation. Wilkes is tied in to practically every sleazy official in the state (and guess what, he was co-chair of Arnold's 2003 campaign). He's looking at 40 years hard time unless he pleads out and gives up someone higher up the ladder. John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter and Jerry Lewis must be calling Cape Canaveral from some of those astronaut diapers right about now.

Incidentally, this is likely to be Carol Lam's last official act as a US Attorney, as she was caught up in the Great Prosecutor Purge of 2007. While the initial word was that the firings were performance-based, a McClatchy report turned out to contradict that.

Although the Bush administration has said that six U.S. attorneys were fired recently in part because of "performance related" issues, at least five of them had received positive job evaluations before they were ordered to step down.

Administration officials have been forced to defend the firings in recent weeks after critics raised concerns that well-respected, competent U.S. attorneys known for their independence were being removed to make way for handpicked candidates who'd be less likely to buck the White House [...]

A Justice Department official who spoke on behalf of the administration said the dispute might simply be a matter of "semantics."

"Performance-related can mean many things," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because the Privacy Act bars officials from discussing personnel decisions. "Policy is set at a national level. Individual U.S. attorneys around the country can't just make up their policy agenda."

That's hilarious. "You see, when we say 'performance,' it doesn't necessarily mean the performance of the attorneys thmselves, it could mean the Bush Administration's performance!"

One of the attorneys who got a good review? Carol Lam. Because she actually prosecutes crimes. Like the crimes of Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes.

Stay tuned.