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Foggo Prosecutors Want Secret Testimony Revealed
Prosecutors in the Dusty Foggo case are urging the judge to make public secret grand jury testimony, saying that the American people has a right to know the extent of Foggo's misconduct, the AP reports.
They also argued that the testimony should be considered by the judge at Foggo's sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for next month.
Prosecutors won't say what the specific information that they want released from the transcripts is.
Foggo, the former number three official at the CIA, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with a scheme to help his old friend Brent Wilkes to obtain agency contracts at inflated contracts. Former GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is serving a jail sentence for taking bribes from Wilkes.
Josh
Zachary
I believe the American people have every right to know all of the charges . . . he's part of the picture of defrauding America which resulted in loss of tax payers money. Let's print the entire charges in detail!
January 9, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kmac ,
Could these assorted transcripts from Foggo's case be the "roadmap " to all types of other pay to play wrongdoing involving contractors and other officials -at the CIA and elsewhere in our government . Weren't Foggo and Brent Wilkes boyhood buddies - are was that Wade? In any event the defrauding of our dollars was ongoing -and many ,many of the same players were involved in all of this .
Maybe if Conyers gets his three million we can appoint Carol Lamm as his chief investigator /or special prosecutor ..
January 9, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bingo! Now we know why the intelligence committee is so afraid of Panetta coming in.
January 10, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the really great parts of the English and American justice system has been the requirement that trials be open and public. Such trials really expose the criminal side of society, but more important, they also inform the public what is happening in government. That's why the term "Star Chamber" is abhorrent.
The Bush/Cheney administration penchant for doing everything important in secret has been one of the truly anti-democratic aspects of the Bush/Cheney administration.
The Prosecutors are right. Get that testimony out and make it public.
January 10, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
This could be interesting...
Keep in mind that Foggo's sentencing is likely going to be the last major court hearing of the entire Cunningham debacle. What Grande Finale could be better than finally, after some 3 YEARS of waiting, letting Hookergate out of the cage, in all it's glory?
January 9, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a foreboding that a good 80% of the high crimes and misdemeanors carried out by assorted parties in the past eight years will be put to rest with Fido's gnawed bones under the rosebush in the back yard and never seen again. Let's face it: we have been governed (if that is the word) by felons and the truth is too terrible to share with the public: it might rouse the people of this country from their apathy and make us demand decency and transparency from our masters.
As for the incoming bunch, I am in a wait-and-see mode. But I don't have much hope considering the multitude of The Usual Suspects who are going to be filling the halls of the Executive Office Building and other such venerable sites.
January 9, 2009 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
"As for the incoming bunch, I am in a wait-and-see mode. But I don't have much hope considering the multitude of The Usual Suspects who are going to be filling the halls of the Executive Office Building and other such venerable sites."
I'll bite.
Many of us here worked hard to denounce and remove the scoundrels and lunatics who abused and bloodied our country for the last eight, dark years. People here who were for Hillary in some cases swallowed very hard before joining us, and getting on the path to victory and defeating a horrifying Republican ticket, and electing a man we hope will be a transformational President.
I am talking Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln. Our aspirations are nothing less. Now, if you have information that the people the President-elect has put forth for appointment are unfit or "suspect" to use your word, please do us and the country a big favor and speak now. This site is read at (or otherwise reaches) the highest levels. If we've got it wrong somehow, please tell us right now. We need to know. This is not the we-love-cynicism site. We are serious. Tell us what is wrong (you see Richardson's gone), if you have something specific to share. Thanks much.
January 10, 2009 6:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I'll start with Hillary and move on to Summers, and of course Gates. We've been there, done that. Maybe the Prez-elect will be an assertive ringmaster over this circus, but I don't have my hopes too high.
January 10, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your reply. I can't speak much about Summers; he had a very troubled time at Harvard, as I've been reading. He has got to produce here in very difficult circumstances, no question.
Hillary? Politically, I think this was very shrewd. Keep her out of the health care issues, shut up the shameful PUMA crowd (and their allied misandrists), and give her a chance to shine -- she is a star of the world stage, who has better potential to help rescue our international reputation so cavalierly ruined by Bush/Cheney? She may screw it up, sure, but I see now reason for pessimism, and if she's not 100 times better than Condoleeza "Maybe-I-shoulda-considered-those-briefings-and-warnings" Rice, I'll eat my hat. Obama's people will be around Hillary. This could be a genius appointment, I hope so.
Gates is simply one of the best people that could possibly be in this job. Ask Zbig: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733757_1735600,00.html I can't take "been there, done that" seriously with respect to Gates. Rather, it is failure to articulate a criticism. I hope your not trying to make the phony point that having experience itself is bad, I can't believe you'd be unsophisticated about it.
So, I don't see any reason for pessimism with the last two; I do wonder a little bit about Summers and I hope there's no need to.
Take care.
January 11, 2009 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Organizations over time reflect the morality and honesty of the Chief. That's because the upper management reflects the top managers, so a lot of it is determined by who the guys at the top select to work for them. The guys at the top then determine what is permitted and rewarded by workers down the line. Don't forget - Dick Cheney ran the selection of all the top political managers in the Bush administration. This administration reflects Cheney's morality and Bush's indifference and narcissism.
Those individuals who are especially dishonest and immoral get the most media. Honesty and doing what you are supposed to simply has no news value. The news selects for the worst.
The result is that cynics have a field day expecting the worst, and there isn't a lot in the media to counter them, although the overwhelming majority of people working in government (and big business, for that matter. It's a large organization phenomenon.) are hard-working and honest.
January 10, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope you are right.
January 10, 2009 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think 95% of us are hoping for the best, but after the last 8 years, cynicism is really, really hard to shake. Personally, I am cautiously optimistic, but very cautiously.
January 10, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can only imagine the administration's classified brief to the judge arguing that revealing the sources and methods of our former CIA chief's hookers-'n-blow poker parties would be devastating to America's national security interests.
January 10, 2009 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
?????????????????????????
American Security Interests?
The only people who want to keep a veil of secrecy over this are those who might be implicated in wrongdoing and are using "National Security" as justification for hiding their criminal, or immoral acts.
How, and by whom, did all this get labelled "secret" in the first place?
January 12, 2009 8:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the double post. I can't figure out how it happened.
January 10, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
How is it that what Cunningham, Foggo, Wilkes, and others did is not treason?
In part, treason is defined as:
Treachery, Disloyalty, Betrayal, Faithlessness
We are talking in a "Military" context here, right?
January 10, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
REQUEST. My interest is really peaked on this. There are enough TPM readers around so that someone out there must have the confidential "hard copy" or (at worst) some credible verbal input as to what Kyle Foggo actually said to the grand jury. I want to know what this nasty secret stuff really is. This should be leaked to Josh Marshall who can report it to the TPM readers. If the Bush Admin. operatives can conveniently leak out scads of stuff like the outing of Valerie Plame --- then TPM can out this testimony. BTW Judge James Cacheris is the brother of Inside the Beltway attorney Plato Cacheris.
January 10, 2009 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Organizations over time reflect the morality and honesty of the Chief. That's because the upper management reflects the top managers, so a lot of it is determined by who the guys at the top select to work for them. The guys at the top then determine what is permitted and rewarded by workers down the line."
I agree with that and not just for organizations but larger social groups, even the entire society as well. Never underestimate the importance of leadership, whether good or bad.
One of the most troubling things about this time is not just the failure of competence by elites across the board but their abject moral failure. When the majority of the public comes to believe that it's every man for himself (see: TARP), it will be. Keep that in mind as we call for the sunshine to disinfect. We'll also need to make sure that those who are exposed are made to account for what they've done and it needs to go way beyond small fries such as Foggo.
January 10, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. The "sunshine" is going to be critical.
I think the conservative/libertarian fantasy that only individuals make decisions and that every individual is himself totally responsible for the decisions he makes is a large part of the problem. That leads to the conclusion that (1) leaders are not responsible for actions of their subordinates, and (2) their own self-serving use of the power they have as leaders is entirely between themselves and their own conscience.
The first led to the failure to track the Abu Ghraib problems, Yoo's permissions to torture prisoners, and the Katrina FEMA problems back to the ultimate leadership and punish the leaders who were actually responsible for the actions they directed and permitted a few low-level flunkies to conduct. Lindie Englund and her sergeant as responsible for Abu Ghraib? I can't buy it.
The second is, though, I think even more corrosive. It has given us people like Cunningham, Ney, Foggo and it gave us KBR's ripoff of the American taxpayers among many others. But one thing about that. Those people all knew that if they got caught the media and the public would give them Hell, so they did everything they could in secret.
Not only has the secrecy insulated everyone up to Bush and Cheney from the aftereffects of getting caught (as happened to Nixon) it has resulted in an almost complete lack of personal responsibility for the results to the decisions the leaders have made and implemented. Of course, they don't feel personally responsible for the behavior of their subordinates because supposedly that behavior was based on the subordinates' totally independent personal decisions.
That's what's behind this meme that "Bush is leaving office with his head held high" and Cheney saying that he hasn't obtained and misused too much power or made any real mistakes. They really see Scooter Libby as a martyr because he was caught, but he is a hero because he stopped Fitzgerald from reaching higher and protected Cheney.
None of this could be true if they had not hidden key decisions behind a veil of "national security" secrecy and avoided all effective review. Of course, the Congress didn't try to do any review, but that's another matter. There they have the lack of personal responsibility that goes with both secrecy and with being part of a collective body that makes decisions.
January 10, 2009 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Cheney is the ultimate authoritarian and that appears to be the only “ethic” which guides him. He thinks that the only responsibilities are for leaders to lead and followers to follow and, therefore, couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the people’s right to know and decide about their government.
Then, same with the entire Village, when you get right down to it. I think that’s what Josh was getting at by saying the press corps. was fundamentally Republican in nature. They all worship at the alter of official (not moral) authority, forced civility and deep cynicism about politics and government – in other words, their jobs. How else can you explain their never-ending fealty to and trust in an abusive, incompetent, two-faced Daddy-party who is only honest when telling them that they suck and that he thinks the organization Daddy is supposed to be managing “is the problem”?
They love it. At least, way better than having Mommy explain all those icky, boring policy problems. Plus, sometimes, she gets emotional about that stuff. Ewwww.
Anyway, Daddy likes to have his fun and what’s the harm of sucking on a couple of Cuban cigars, a few DC hookers and some public teat? It’s what Daddy’s do, right?
January 10, 2009 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remember the agency was created mainly to get dod funds without need to disclose their use to begin with.
This was the agency that created the black budget, the % of the dod budget that concgress does not see. It's just $ that goes somewhere.
So, guess what kind of inflated whatever they could have scammed.
Really, with that group ...... and no need to disclose.......
January 11, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink