Associated Press reports:

The Homeland Security Department notified Shirlington Limousine in recent weeks that it intended to exercise an option to extend its contract for transporting department employees around the Washington area, department spokesman Russ Knocke said.

The $21 million contract went into effect Oct. 27, 2005, with annual options for five years. . . .

Shirlington, of Arlington, Va., is part of a federal investigation into whether a defense contractor provided disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California with prostitutes and limos. Cunningham is serving jail time for taking bribes from defense contractors. Shirlington's president, Christopher Baker, has appeared before a grand jury in San Diego as part of the ongoing investigation.

A House Homeland Security subcommittee held a hearing over the summer on how Shirlington got two Homeland Security contracts, including the one last year, despite a history of problems.

TPMm readers may recall that before he was caught and sent to jail, Duke Cunningham wrote a letter of recommendation to DHS on behalf of Shirlington.

The top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a summary of the panel's probe into how Duke Cunningham used the panel's staff and resources to forward his corrupt ways.

You can read the summary here.

The probe, ordered last December, found what looks like new dirt on former CIA #3 Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who's been drawn into the Cunningham investigation. But the report concluded that the panel itself was clear of wrongdoing in Cunningham's case.

Indeed, one of Duke's main bribers, Mitchell Wade, even tried to cozy up to staffers, but he kind of weirded them out, according to the five-page executive summary released by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the panel's ranking member.

The report identified three troubling activities, and recommended they be referred to the Justice Department or national security agencies for further investigation:

Read more »

The San Diego Union-Tribune published excerpts from a fiery letter it received from Duke Cunningham, the felonious ex-congressman the paper helped put in jail.

But, as clever Reader DH found, the paper secretly published the entire letter, hiding it in a PDF on its site.

You can read the four-page letter here. It's clearly a response to Marcus Stern, the U-T reporter who broke the Duke scandal and now appears to be working on a book about the saga. "You write you book," Cunningham wrote in a barely-legible scrawl, "and remember what forge [sic] got from [Mitchell] Wade [one of Duke's main bribers] they you printed" he continued writing, "as truth will come out and you will find out how liablist [sic] you have & will be," he finished.

Although he wrote early in the letter that he could not discuss his case, Duke dropped some tantalizing tidbits later on.

"Ask yourself why I kicked [Wade] off his own boat twice, told him I was not going to stay on his boat and put it up for sale," Duke wrote. That appears to be a reference to the Duke-Stir, a boat which Wade bought and later gave to Cunningham.

He also appears to disclose classified information. "There is a secret paper in my file that the U.S. Airforce presented to me (both former Chiefs of USAF) to increase the MZM programs and the justification for doing so," Duke wrote.

"It was funded at less than wanted & it will today save lives in the best Aviation Humit [sic] Program in existence now ever deployed with our training forces."

Here's the entire letter. Note: he doesn't say anything about hookers.

Duke Cunningham speaks! In an error-laden letter to the reporters who helped put him in prison, the disgraced ex-congressman lashed out at the investigative team, its paper, one of his bribers and -- not TPMmuckraker. (We're hoping a separate letter is on its way.)

Duke, who may have been the first congressman ever to draft up his own "bribe menu," complained that the reporters only wanted to write about "how I died not how I lived." He cited his many accomplishments and citations, including "Library Man of the Year."

More:

[Cunningham's] anger at the Copley organization – parent company of the Union-Tribune – was clear even from the envelope, which he addressed to “Copley News tabloid” with the word “tabloid” underlined.

“I hurt more than anyone could imagine and without my faith your constant cruelty would destroy me,” he wrote.

Cunningham cited his religious faith again when he wrote, “The Lord's Prayer forgive me my debts as I would forgive. My first sin each night is the failure to forgive the U.T. Not just coverage but the brutal two and three pages each week that has nearly destroyed me and my family.”

He warned that the “truth will come out and you will find out how liablest [libelous] you have & will be.”

He also complained that Stern and other Copley reporters “only want to write about how I died not how I lived.” And he rattled off a long list of honors he said he earned as a congressman – “Education Man of the Year, Impact Aide Man of the Year, Library Man of the Year,” among others.

I imagine the letter was difficult for the reporters to read -- blinded, as they were, by the light glancing off the Pulitzer prizes they won by helping land Duke in jail.

The paper didn't release the entire letter, just a portion, which you can see here.

In other Duke news, the paper reported that the ex-congressman's wife has forfeited her home to the Feds. Duke purchased the multi-million-dollar palace through illegal means. If it wasn't for those meddling reporters. . .