Is former top intelligence official James King under pressure from federal prosecutors?
If not, it looks like he should be. As we reported several weeks ago, King — the former head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency — twice aided the bribery schemes of Mitchell Wade, making $12,000 in illegal campaign donations to help Wade buy favors from lawmakers.
At the time, King was a top executive at Wade’s defense contracting firm, MZM. He took over the company, which is now named Athena Innovative Solutions, after Wade’s felonies became public.
King could be a dangerous fellow to go down — for many folks. He was a trusted aide to Michael V. Hayden, former NSA chief and now head of the CIA, who employed him as a contractor from MZM. While at MZM, King also played a key role in developing the Pentagon’s troubled domestic spying operation, CIFA. And as a senior MZM executive, he was likely a witness to many of Wade’s hijinks.
As the Washington Post reported Friday, Feds have convinced another MZM executive, Richard Berglund, to plead guilty to making the same kind of fraudulent donations. (Check out our guest-blogging TPM Reader DK’s thoughts on this.)
Berglund admitted he and his wife wrote checks to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) after Wade handed him a cash reimbursement for the donations — what we found King to have done, after examining court records and donation reports. Berglund also admitted he passed $4,000 to other MZM employees, who in turn wrote checks to Goode.
The scam, known as a “straw donor” scheme, allowed Wade to evade campaign donation restrictions by funneling cash to Goode via his employees. The crime is a felony, although it is seldom prosecuted — unless, it appears, the feds want leverage to win some cooperation. Which makes us wonder: don’t the feds want cooperation from King?
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