Seems like Brent Wilkes isn’t the only one who wants out of jail.  The New York Times reports that Duke is seeking a pardon from President Bush:

In addition, prominent federal inmates are asking Mr. Bush to commute their sentences. Among them are Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman from California; Edwin W. Edwards, a former Democratic governor of Louisiana; John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban; and Marion Jones, the former Olympic sprinter.

The requests are adding to a backlog of nearly 2,300 pending petitions, most from “ordinary people who committed garden-variety crimes,” said Margaret Colgate Love, a clemency lawyer.

In 2002, when Duke was in Congress, he tried to get a pardon for Tommy K., the Greek businessman and convicted felon who had purchased the honorable gentleman’s yacht. Today, the 66-year-old Cunningham is in a federal prison “camp” in Tuscon with an expected release date of 2013.

Jimmy Hoffa, Richard Nixon, Marc Rich, Patty Hearst all got pardons, so maybe Duke’s got a shot.

So, a secret admirer of Brent Wilkes wants to help him get out of prison.

The former defense contractor was sentenced in February to 12 years for bribing former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham with hookers, cash, and meals at DC’s Capital Grille. But Wilkes has been eating daily specials at Terminal Island FCI in San Pedro because he can’t come up with $1.4 million in collateral to secure relase.

A few days ago, his attorney said that some unnamed person was willing to bail Wilkes out, but only if he or she can shield their identity from everyone but Judge Larry Burns. Mr. or Mrs. X was concerned that public disclosure would impact his or her ability to make a living.

This seems a bit odd. If you can plunk down the couple hundred Gs Wilkes needs (his family has pledged the rest) your livelihood would seem to be fairly secure, no?

Not surprisingly, prosecutors don’t like this. According to them, Wilkes has misled the court with “false affidavits and questionable dealings” over his assets:

…the government believes that the sealing of traditionally open proceedings, which may prove crucial to securing the defendant’s release, will only raise the specter of undue influence and favoritism being exercised on behalf of a formerly well-heeled, white collar criminal that would not be afforded to his less-advantaged fellow felons.

The government only likes secrecy when it suits its own interests. Prosecutors bent over backward for fellow Cunningham briber Tommy K., who pleaded guilty in a secret hearing and then flew off to stay at a 5-star hotel in Greece.  We still don’t know why that happened because … the government is still keeping secrets!

A hearing is set for later this month. I think Wilkes will be wearing his jumpsuit and plastic sandals for a while longer. Judge Burns doesn’t seem to like Wilkes very much. Burns said he “doubts Mr. Wilkes’ trustworthiness” because Wilkes testified he had never seen the prostitute who screwed him in Hawaii. Twice.

Thanks to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA has become synonymous with waste and graft in the intelligence community. The agency was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to bring order to the confused world of military counterintelligence. One of its contractors happened to be bribing the greedy and insecure Congressman Cunningham to the tune of more than $1 million.

That was bad enough but CIFA also blundered badly at the outset by gathering information on U.S. citizens in its Talon database, a big no-no. Bloggers like R.J. Hillhouse Ph.D cheered when The New York Times reported in April of this year that the Pentagon would be shutting it down. I’m sure all the little petty bureaucratic rivals CIFA had in the intelligence world were pleased as well. But R.J. Hillhouse Ph.D, like me, really had no idea what CIFA was up to.

Last week’s report by the Senate Intelligence Committee shows that CIFA actually was doing important work, but was prevented from its mission by senior civilian leaders at the Defense Department.

According to the report, CIFA was given the job of investigating a mysterious meeting in Rome between Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar (right) and U.S. Defense Department officials in Rome and Paris. One of the DoD officials at the meeting was Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who is in prison for passing classified information relating to Iran to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The meetings were arranged by a civilian named Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst with the American Enterprise Institute who had close ties to the Bush administration. Ledeen had help, reportedly, from the Italian government and its intelligence service. Italian government officials attended the meeting in Rome.

CIFA concluded that Ghorbanifar may have been used by “agents of a foreign intelligence service” to reach and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government. During the Rome meeting in December 2001, Ghorbanifar passed word that he could sow the seeds of discontent in Iran for $5 million by causing traffic jams at key intersections in Teheran. The report also mentions a $25 million price tag for other operations.

After the press found about the Rome meeting, Stephen Cambone (left), the Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence, gave CIFA the job of conducting a “thorough complete and expeditious” inquiry into the Rome meeting. Cambone said the tasking was requested by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith.

CIFA took the job seriously and conducted 19 interviews that are cited in the Senate report. About a month later, on October 21, 2003, CIFA, acting on Cambone’s orders, halted its investigation.

In its final report, CIFA noted that it had blocked from conducting interviews of key DoD personnel involved in the Rome meeting, including Larry Franklin. Cambone and the DoD General Counsel, William Haynes prevented CIFA from interviewing CIA personnel.

Even so, CIFA was able to get to the heart of the matter:

The most significant matter raised in the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s report was the possibility that Mr. “Ghorbanifar or his associates are being used as agents of a foreign intelligence service to leverage his continuing contact with Michael Ledeen and others to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government.” The report noted that there were multiple occasions where information from Mr. Ghorbanifar entered U.S. government channels via Mr. Ledeen. These channels included personnel from the FBI, CIA, DoD, the White and Congress

From the Senate report:

Conclusion #6: The actions of Cambone and Haynes “prevented a full understanding of the contacts between Mr. Ghorbanifar and U.S. Government officials and a thorough assessment of the counterintelligence issues related to these contacts.

Conclusion #7: Cambone’s decision to halt the CIFA inquiry was “premature.”

Conclusion #8: The DoD leadership failed to implement CIFA’s recommendation to conduct an inter-agency analysis of the counterintelligence implications of Mr. Ghorbanifar and his ability to directly or indirectly influence U.S. Government officials.

No doubt there was waste and abuse at CIFA, but there were also some people there who stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble by simply doing their jobs.

If you’re looking for insight as to what is was like in the courtroom when the jury pronounced Brent Wilkes guilty on all counts, I’m not the one who can give it to you. The Wilkes jury reached its verdict just as Judge Burns was sentencing a major Tijuana drug kingpin, so all the reporters were already in place. I rushed downtown, and I was a disheveled mess when I got there, but it was all over. Then I left too soon and missed the jury forewoman.

So I had a pretty bad day. But Brent Wilkes had a far worse one.

The 53-year-old defense contractor was found guilty on 13 counts of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and bribery. The jury found that Wilkes plied Cunningham with more than $700,000 in bribes in exchange for millions of dollars in government contracts.

Wilkes gambled everything on the only hand he had to play, and lost. He figured that if he could tell the jury his side of the story of his relationship with former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, he could clear everything up. Then everyone would see how badly the prosecution had twisted things. But the prosecution just had too much evidence that contradicted him. Even if the jury wanted to believe the charming and funny defense contractor, they just couldn’t.

What bounces around and around in my head is the fact that Wilkes is no fool. He’s been a poker player since high school and he knew exactly what cards the government was holding — they included Cunningham, the prostitutes, and Wilkes’ own nephew — and he had to have known that the odds weren’t good. Once the government has you in its sights, it just will not quit. Far wealthier and more powerful men have pleaded guilty rather than take their chances before a jury.

So why didn’t Brent Wilkes?

I’ve posted what I think are some interesting exhibits from the trial of Brent Wilkes, but by any standard exhibit 60-01 is extraordinary. This is the photo lineup federal agents presented to an escort in Hawaii for the purposes of identifying her client on the night of August 15, 2003: