Duke Cunningham

Cunningham: I'm a Liar and a Crook

Paul Kiel | July 18, 2007, 10:54AM

Even after Duke Cunningham pled guilty to accepting millions in bribes, he'd still tried to cast himself as somehow less than thoroughly greedy and corrupt. He'd accepted gifts from defense contractors, yes, and sure, he'd been instrumental in procuring tens of millions in government contracts for them, but that doesn't mean they were bribes.

Well, a year in prison seems to have clarified things for Cunningham. Investigators sat down with him in February of this year, and as the FBI's summary, obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune, shows, Cunningham was straightforward about the extent of his corruption: He asked for, got, and worked to conceal bribes.

That's bad news for Brent Wilkes, who's been indicted for bribing Cunningham. Wilkes has gamely argued that he didn't bribe Cunningham, so much as play the game the way it has to be played. "Transactional lobbying," is Wilkes' name for it, and that's apparently what he plans to argue to a jury -- that he was extorted, that he was a victim of Washington's culture.

Unfortunately for Wilkes, Cunningham says the two went to an awful lot of trouble to conceal their activity. As the Union-Trib points out, that means Cunningham will likely make an appearance at Wilkes' trial as an unfriendly witness. Cunningham also confirms that Wilkes procured prostitutes for the both of them during a trip to Hawaii, something that Wilkes has denied (Cunningham says that Wilkes took the “younger and cuter” one for himself).

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Hookergate

Senator John Fessed Up

Paul Kiel | July 10, 2007, 11:29AM

It wasn't immediately apparent from the stories yesterday, but Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) showed great faith in the Fourth Estate yesterday, admitting to being a customer of the D.C. madam as a sort of preemptive measure. The madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, released her business' phone records to the press last week and uploaded the records to her website (currently down) yesterday. Apparently Vitter thought it was just a matter of time before some muckraker found him out.

Update: Actually, Hustler Magazine says it was behind Vitter's sudden statement.

Vitter's statement only admits obliquely that Vitter's number was on one of Palfrey's old lists. The AP's New Orleans' bureau apparently received the statement yesterday, and then spent some time trying to confirm its authenticity. "Vitter's spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement Monday evening in an e-mail to The Associated Press," according to an early version of the wire story.

No one seems to know when (or how often) Vitter used the service; all his statement says is that it was "prior to his running for the U.S. Senate" in 2004. He'd been a congressman since 1999, and Palfrey's records date back to 1996. The AP still hadn't seen the records as of last night, since reporters were "unable to connect to Palfrey's website."

The records contain thousands upon thousands of numbers without names. Most of the recent records, dating from 2002 to 2006, were released to ABC News back in March; a team of researchers set to matching the numbers to names. Jeff Schneider, a spokesman for ABC News, said that they had not found Vitter's number in those records. "With the release of a full ten years of records, it seems clear that his number came up in one of the records we did not have access to," he told me.

As for now, the race is on for who can pile up the most vividly hypocritical quote from the family values (or as he put it, "Louisiana values") conservative. In the running: Sen. Vitter maligning the "Hollywood left" for violating the "sanctity of marriage," and Vitter arguing that President Clinton should step down for his extramarital affair (Vitter, by the by, replaced Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) after the speaker was forced to step down because of an affair). There are, you can be sure, many more. Glenn Greenwald has a rundown here.

Update: The prevailing quote of the day seems to be this one:

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse reporter: If her husband were as unfaithful as Livingston or former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”

Hookergate

D.C. Madam Phone Records Released

Paul Kiel | July 5, 2007, 5:47PM

Just when D.C.'s johns got comfortable again.

Today, a federal judge denied the government's attempts to keep Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. madam, from disseminating her business' phone records. Now she's free to do what she will with them. The government sought a restraining order on Palfrey back in March, too late to stop her from giving most of her records (Palfrey says it was about 80% of years 2002 to 2006) to ABC News, which busily matched thousands of numbers to names. Those records led to Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias' resignation. Brian Ross, during ABC's 20/20 report on Palfrey's service, said that there were plenty of high-profile D.C. types on the lists -- numbers of "Georgetown mansions and prominent CEOs, officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and lobbyists both Republican and Democratic" -- but that there were no members of Congress or White House officials that they could find. Maybe in that remaining 20%?