Duke, In His Own WordsThe trial of Brent Wilkes is on temporary hiatus due to the wildfires, but we’ve got your Duke Cunningham fix anyway.
Unfortunately, it seems a sure thing now that Cunningham himself won’t testify at the trial. As a kind of substitute, here’s (mp3) audio of the phone conversation that ended his Congressional career. It’s available through the website for The Wrong Stuff, the book on Cunningham by the Copley News team that broke the story.
In early June of 2005, Copley reporter Marcus Stern came across records for Cunningham’s now-infamous way-above-market house sale to defense contractor Mitch Wade (Wade himself sold the house months later for a loss of $700,000). And during that phone call, Stern got the other half of the quid pro quo he was looking for: Cunningham’s admission that he’d written letters to help Wade’s company MZM score contracts (that’s at about the five minute mark). Four days later, Stern’s story came out; five months later, Cunningham pleaded guilty.
It’s a little bit of journalistic history and a lesson (if you needed one) that just because someone keeps his cool, it doesn’t mean he’s not lying. Take a listen.