Skulls,nude juice bar?

Could it be the same hand from Springfield?

Plainfield, Illinois--After she was arrested for keeping a severed hand and six skulls in her South Plainfield home, exotic dancer Linda Kay asked her father and a friend to put up their homes to help secure her $100,000 bail.
Now her father and friend face the prospect of losing their houses after the 31-year-old Kay missed a court hearing yesterday, forfeiting the bail she posted after her arrest Friday on charges of improper disposition of human remains.
South Plainfield Municipal Court Judge John Leonard yesterday issued an arrest warrant for Kay, charging her with contempt of court, and setting bail on that charge at another $100,000.
Kay's father, Robert Kay, said his Scotch Plains house had been used to secure the original bail bond.
"I'm sweating ... I had to put my house up," the father said. He said the South Plainfield house owned by Linda Kay and her childhood friend, Sean McDonough -- where the body parts were discovered -- also was used to secure the bond, along with a third house belonging to a friend.
"I have no clue where she is. I really wish she had gone to court today. I am the last to know anything," Robert Kay said. "She's scared to death. Her friends are, too. They are all together, and I think they all ran away."
Linda Kay, a dancer at Hott 22, an all-nude juice bar on Route 22 in Union, was arrested about 1:15 p.m. Friday when officers investigating a report of a man threatening to kill himself went to the Diana Drive house in South Plainfield.
Police didn't find any man there, but they did find a jaggedly severed hand in a mason jar of formaldehyde on Kay's dresser in her basement bedroom.
Officers also found six human skulls in another bedroom. Authorities said they suspect the skulls were purchased online, but police they were included as part of the criminal charge until they complete an investigation into how Kay obtained them. The Middlesex County Medical Examiner's Office was attempting to get fingerprints from the severed hand.
Polina Nickulina, 26, also was arrested at the house Friday on a warrant charging her with failing to appear in court for a weapons possession charge involving a prior incident at the house. Nickulina was released on bail.

THE BARE TRUTH

London, England--Men may be barred from baring their chests - and stomachs -and asses--in public under new local laws being considered by town halls.
They would stop men stripping off their shirts and/or wearing thong bikinis in crowded town centers and give powers to police to remove any who defy the cover-up laws.
The proposal has been inspired by the least attractive side effect of the heatwave - the tendency of a number of often middle-aged men to go about in nothing more than thongs and sandals.
Last week the Daily Mail highlighted the wave of revulsion among most of the public at the summer's least welcome fashion trend, and pictured a series of the worst examples in the hope of shaming offenders into keeping their T-shirts and pants on.

Now local authorities have been circulated with a scheme for using by-laws to require shirts and shorts that cover the derriere in town centers and to arrest men who won't wear them.
The laws would operate in a similar manner to local statutes that ban drinking on the streets or which prevent gangs of youths from congregating.
The politician behind the plan is former local government minister Nicholas Bennett, who has canvassed councils across the country for support.
"There is a problem," Mr Bennett said yesterday. "In my part of the country we are trying to revitalize the main shopping precinct.
"But one of the things that is depressing for anyone going shopping is the numbers of shaven-headed men, mainly in their 30s and 40s, who seem to think people want to see their bloated, often tatooed torsos, and their bums."
He added: "It is only a small minority, one in a hundred people. But these men do look aggressive and occasionally behave aggressively. You would see a big difference in the shopping centre if they were made to put on a shirt and some trousers."
"It is nice weather and most of us are wearing fewer clothes. But a town center is not the beach, and taking your top off or showing your cheeky side is going too far, for men as well as women."
"It is an unfortunate thing, but those men who like best to bare their stomachs and bums are usually the ones who have too much stomach and too much bum."
Officials in Bromley, in south east London, have responded warily to the proposal, suggesting that implementation might prove 'difficult'.
However by-laws governing local behavior and giving police powers to act against those who infringe them can be pushed through by town halls if the win approval from the Home Office.

GIVE THAT MAN A HAND

Springfield, VA- Asghar reached across the counter at the meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer's second order, goat meat.
When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer's severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw.
The customer ran down the store's center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was "not a terrorist."
Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand "for Allah."
Rescue workers arrived minutes after the incident Saturday evening and took the man -- and his detached hand -- to the hospital.
Fairfax County police declined to comment or release the man's name yesterday, saying no charges would be filed. Those who saw the action unfold remained jarred.
Asghar said the man's son told him that evening that his father was on medication for mental problems. Dan Schmidt, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, said authorities believe the man had mental health problems. Schmidt said he did not know whether doctors planned to try to re-attach the man's hand.
"I don't know what happened to that guy," Asghar, 45, said as he leaned yesterday against a stack of Pakistan Link newspapers at the small strip mall store in the Franconia area, which caters to customers from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We are shaking still when we are talking about it."
With his son following, the man went into the parking lot, where Vikas Sinsunwal, 18, was hanging out with a group of friends in front of his parents' store, Niralla Sweets. The young men were admiring a friend's new motorcycle, Sinsunwal said, when the man walked coolly toward them.
The man was holding aloft his bleeding left arm -- sliced several inches above the wrist -- and using his right hand to hold up a photo identification badge that hung around his neck.
"We thought it was fake," Sinsunwal said of the limb. Then they heard the man mumbling calmly but angrily in a mixture of English and Urdu about working in the area and his children attending school here.
"He said, 'I did this for Allah'," Sinsunwal said.
Startled, the friends rushed inside Niralla Sweets, which sells pastry treats adorned with almond slices. The man followed.
As his son tried to calm him, the man stood outside the store's large windows, holding the badge and showing no sign of pain, Sinsunwal said. His sister, Shivani Sinsunwal, 20, called police as frightened customers begged her not to let the man inside.
About 30 seconds later, the man began walking toward the street. By now, workers and customers had poured out of nearby stores and were shouting at the man to stop.
"He wouldn't stop," Vikas Sinsunwal said.
The man cursed at and ran from police officers who arrived a few minutes later, witnesses said.
As he neared the busy intersection of Backlick Road and Spring Garden, witnesses said, police tackled him on a grassy area across from an appliance store.
Yesterday, a piece of cardboard blocked the narrow walkway that separates the shopping area of the meat market from the work area, where meat is cut with a vertical saw, a large contraption mounted on a shiny metal counter.
Asghar said a large door will be installed to block the space.
A freshly handwritten sign, a replacement for one that was spattered with the man's blood, was taped on the glass front of the meat counter.
It read:

"Employes Only, Please Stay Out Side, Thanks"

Bypass in a box

The box of Swanson's Hungry-Man XXL frozen dinners proudly proclaims that it's crammed with one and a half pounds of "food," but what isn't proclaimed is the nutritional information. As is common with most frozen dinners, the amount of sodium in the Hungry-Man XXL meals is staggering.
Sure, the calories (970), fat (40 grams), and carbohydrates (106 grams) of the Roasted Carved Turkey are not for the weak-hearted (literally), but the 3,600 mg of sodium in the one meal is outlandishly high, especially when the Food and Drug Administration recommends keeping your daily sodium intake below 2,400 mg. for the entire day!
One Thousand Miligrams equals1 Gram. So, we're talking about 3+ GRAMS of sodium in one sitting.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe that 3 Grams of Cocaine, inhaled in one huge mega-fat line, would likely do you less harm than 3 Grams of sodium scarfed down in one meal.

Think about it.

Israeli Tanks Roll Into Lebanon

Avivim,Israel- An estimated 10 Israeli armored vehicles rolled into Lebanon Saturday by crushing a border fence near the Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras.
A report by the local news agency ABS-CBN said the tanks drove past a UN observation post and is the latest Israeli offensive against Hezbollah guerillas. Maroun al-Ras is a strategic hilltop that has been the scene of heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.
But Israeli army spokesman Jacob Dalal downplayed reports of a major ground assault. "This is only a pinpoint operation," said army spokesman Jacob Dalal.
Thousands of Israeli troops are massed on the border apparently in preparation for a major push deep into Lebanon.

The Lebanese president warned that its military will engage Israel if a full-scale invasion is launched, an action that could very well begin a much larger, perhaps global, conflict.

Israeli forces have been mounting relentless sea, land and air attacks in Lebanon after Hezbolla guerillas captured two of its soldiers 11 days ago.
The international community has condemned Israel's "disproportionate use" of force against Lebanon which saw the destruction of most of the country's infrastructures and the deaths of over 360 people and injuring hundreds more.
Early Saturday, Israeli war planes destroyed a communications tower disrupting television and phone service throughout the northern country.
The strikes destroyed transmission towers, including one for the leading LBCI satellite television, in Fatqa, in the Kesrwan mountains northeast of Beirut. Transmission towers for TV stations and mobile telephone networks were also destroyed in Terbol in northern Lebanon.

BUSH SENDS MISSILES TO ISRAEL

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hizbollah targets in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Citing U.S. officials who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration, and noted in its report that its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hizbollah.
The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package approved last year which Israel is able to tap when it needs to, the officials told the Times. But some military officers said the request for expedited delivery was unusual and indicated that Israel has many targets it plans to hit in Lebanon.
The arms shipment has not been announced publicly. The officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions included employees of two government agencies, one of whom described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel, the Times said.
Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, the newspaper said, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means.
But one U.S. official said the shipment should not be compared to the kind of an "emergency resupply" of dwindling Israeli stockpiles that was provided during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, according to the Times report.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington told the Times: "We have been using precision-guided munitions in order to neutralize the military capabilities of Hizbollah and to minimize harm to civilians. As a rule, however, we do not comment on Israel's defense acquisitions."

Man, that is so cold...

MADISON, Wis. - A man convicted of keeping his dead mother in a freezer for years so he could keep collecting her Social Security checks avoided federal prison during his sentencing Wednesday.
A judge ordered Philip Schuth, 53, to serve four months simultaneously with the state prison sentence he is already serving and to repay about $35,000 he stole from the federal government.
Schuth pleaded guilty in April to a federal count of misusing a Social Security number
He is serving a seven-year sentence as the result of a standoff with police last year at his home on French Island, just outside La Crosse. It was during the standoff that officers found the frozen body.
Schuth told investigators she died of natural causes in 2000, but he hid the body because he didn't want to be blamed for her death and wanted to keep collecting her Social Security.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb on Wednesday also ordered Schuth to spend four months in a halfway house after his release from prison.
Schuth's attorney, Mike Lieberman, said most of the money has been repaid after police found about $10,000 in his client's house and $24,000 in his bank account.

HELL FROM ABOVE
BEIRUT, Lebanon (July 20) - Israeli troops punched into south Lebanon on Wednesday as warplanes flattened houses and buildings including one thought to hold Hezbollah's top leaders, intensifying an offensive despite mounting international pressure and a Lebanese appeal to spare the country further death and devastation.
The attempt to wipe out the Hezbollah leadership was the most dramatic action on a day that saw Israelis clash with the guerrillas and the Lebanese prime minister say about 300 people in his country had died in the eight-day offensive.
Reports of the death toll in Wednesday's violence ranged as high at 70, which would make it the single deadliest day since the fighting began. Voice of Lebanon state radio reported 70 dead, while other Lebanese media gave figures ranging from 57 to 64. No further breakdowns were provided.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticized the growing death toll, saying the indiscriminate shelling of cities and of nearby military sites was invariably resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians.
"International law demands accountability," Arbour said in Geneva. "The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control."
Israel broadcast warnings into south Lebanon telling civilians to leave the region, a possible prelude to a larger Israeli ground operation.
Hezbollah, undeterred, fired rockets into the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have spent his boyhood, killing two Arab brothers, ages 3 and 9, as they played outdoors.
Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon in one of the largest evacuation operations since World War II, including 1,000 Americans who arrived in Cyprus early Thursday on a rented cruise ship.
"I'm so relieved, there are no words to explain. I'm very thankful," said Elizabeth Kassab, 45, nervously smoking a cigarette on the ship's deck. "But I'm still nervous and I won't relax until we get out of here."
The flight from the fighting came as international pressure mounted on Israel and its key supporter, the United States, to agree to a cease-fire. The rising death toll and scope of the destruction deepened a rift between the U.S. and Europe, and humanitarian agencies were sounding the alarm over a pending catastrophe with a half million people displaced in Lebanon.
Hezbollah denied that any of its "leaders or members" died in the strike in the Bourj al-Barajneh district of south Beirut. The explosives did not blast a leadership bunker, but a mosque under construction, the group said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press.
In a statement, the Israeli military spokesman's office said: "We attacked a bunker of Hezbollah leaders in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut." The military said the attack took place between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. and involved 23 tons of explosives.
Last Friday, Israel bombed leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's headquarters but both he and his family survived.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, whose weak government has been unable to fulfill a U.N. directive to disarm Hezbollah and put its army along the border with Israel, issued an urgent appeal for a cease-fire. He said his country "has been torn to shreds," and pointedly criticized the U.S. position that Israel acts in self-defense.
"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?" a stern-looking Saniora asked a meeting of foreign diplomats including U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. "Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?"
Israel vowed to press the offensive in Lebanon until it destroys the militant Shiite guerrillas' vast arsenal of missiles and drives Hezbollah fighters far from its northern border.
The Bush administration is giving Israel a tacit green light to take the time it needs to neutralize the Shiite militant group, but the Europeans fear mounting civilian casualties will play into the hands of militants and weaken Lebanon's democratically elected government.
President Bush has made the survival of the Saniora government a top priority, but the continuing Israeli operation threatened to return Lebanon to the political chaos and violence that ravaged the country during its long civil war.
Saniora pleaded for the foreign powers to back a cease-fire. "Lift the siege and quickly send humanitarian aid," he said, demanding compensation from Israel for "immeasurable loss" to infrastructure.
About 1,000 Americans fled the relentless air attacks, sailing to Cyprus on a chartered cruise liner. An estimated 200 others were flown to the Mediterranean island on giant Chinook transport helicopters.
In all, more than 10,000 people from at least 13 countries had been extracted from Lebanon by Wednesday night.
Israel refused to rule out a full-scale invasion.
"There is a possibility - all our options are open. At the moment, it's a very limited, specific incursion but all options remain open," Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman, told The Associated Press.
He said Israel had hit "1,000 targets in the last 8 days _ 20 percent (of them were) missile launching sites, control and command centers, missiles and so forth."
Israel said its airstrikes had destroyed "about 50 percent" of Hezbollah's arsenal. "It will take us time to destroy what is left," Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman, a senior army commander, told Israeli Army Radio.
Israel used a radio station near the border to broadcast warnings into south Lebanon telling civilians to leave the region. The radio warnings also stressed that any pickup truck or truck traveling south of the Litani River would be suspected of transporting weapons and rockets and therefore be a potential target of attack.
At least two Israeli soldiers and one militant fighter died Wednesday in the fierce battles in southern Lebanon. Israeli authorities said 18 people were wounded in the Hezbollah rocket attack on Nazareth.
At the close of the eighth day of fighting, a total of 29 people had been reported killed on the Israeli side of the border, including 14 soldiers and 15 civilians.
Saniora said about 300 people had died in Lebanon, 1,000 wounded and half a million were displaced. But precise casualty figures were difficult to confirm.
The police control room announced a total death count in the late morning. As of midday Wednesday, police said 277 had died in Israeli air and missile strikes. The figure at noon Tuesday was 237, which would suggest 40 people had died in the 24 hours ending noon Wednesday.
It was not clear if Saniora had simply rounded the 277 figure up or if he knew of 23 additional deaths Wednesday afternoon.
But it was clear the fighting went on: Three large explosions rattled south Beirut shortly after sunset, a time when Israeli strikes have hit in past days.
The Israeli incursion into Lebanon came before dawn Wednesday, when troops clashed with guerrillas near the coastal border town of Naqoura. The troops later pulled back across the border, though witnesses reported two tanks remained about 500 yards inside Lebanon.
With Hezbollah still operating on the border despite a week's poundings, Israeli strikes were chasing rocket firers with a vengeance, but often hitting others. U.N. peacekeepers' main headquarters in the south was hit by an Israeli artillery shell after a rocket was fired from nearby. There were no casualties.
Israeli bombers, which had been focusing on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, also hit a Christian suburb on the eastern side of the capital for the first time. The target was a truck-mounted machine used to drill for water but could have been mistaken for a missile launcher. No one was hurt.
In the village of Srifa, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, airstrikes flattened 15 houses after rockets were fired from the area. The village's headman, Hussein Kamaledine, said 25 to 30 people lived in the houses, but it was not known if they were at home at the time. Many people have fled southern Lebanon.
"This is a real massacre," Kamaledine told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV as fire engines extinguished the blaze and rescue workers searched for survivors.
High casualties also were feared in the nearby town of Salaa and the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where more houses were devastated.

YEAH BABY!

Well, Bowl Me Over
As we consider the worst fast-food offering ever, let us begin with the artifact itself: KFC's new Famous Bowls product consists of a plastic tub of mashed potatoes or rice, topped with yellow corn, fried chicken nuggets,gravy and three varieties of grated cheese. All in one container, all to be consumed as a single homogenous mass, spork after spork of undifferentiated food matter.
And there it sits on my desk, a steaming, sweating pound of food goo that I purchased at a drive-in window (more anonymous that way) for $3.99. Let me tell you, it's one thing to muse upon the Famous Bowls in a detached, ne'er-shall-pass-my-lips sort of way. Quite another to address the product, spork in hand. And now, in the interests of participatory journalism, I take a bite. Hmmm. Uh-huh. OK. It's like throwing up in reverse.The French culinary aesthete Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin reminded us that food is culture, and so we have to wonder what he would say about the Famous Bowls and life in this America. The French, after all, knew something about revolting peasants. Even in a nation that has made the bulk fast-food bolus something of a culinary art, KFC's Famous Bowls are somehow splendidly, transcendently awful. Perhaps it's because, if you retain any of your childhood aversion to foods touching, the Famous Bowls will send you shrieking into traffic. Perhaps it's because it so brazenly exposes its own purpose: to economically pack the gullets of the poor. Gone is even the pretense that someone might eat this for its taste. This is gerbil food for the disenfranchised. One KFC marketing exec, in a moment of linguistic clarity I'll bet he wishes he had back, is quoted as saying the meals are directed at "heavy fast-food users." Never was the connection between fast food and addictive drugs made more explicit. The Famous Bowls, according to KFC, are designed to lure more lunchtime customers with a meal that has all the goodness of KFC's popular dishes—like gravy—in one convenient, portable, easy-to-inhale serving. And thus the gustatory equivalent of composting. A couple of questions immediately present themselves: Why not go all the way and top the Famous Bowls with an apple pie and pour Coca-Cola over them? To save customers the struggle to pocket their change at the drive-thru, why not throw it on top as well? If the product developers thought Famous Bowls were a good idea, I have two words for them: chicken smoothie.You might have expected, after Morgan Spurlock's hilarious and scary "Super Size Me"—the 2004 documentary that charts his declining health on a steady diet of McDonald's—that the fast-food industry would be at least a little self-conscious about such offerings. Actually, no. McDonald's did begin to offer healthier menu options and retired the notorious Super Size option. But what has fueled McDonald's recent turnaround (revenues up 33% in three years) is the company's Dollar Menu, a smorgasbord of slow-acting poisons (trans fats, sugars, sodium and kilo-calories), marketed primarily at teenagers and minorities. To keep pace with McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's pumped up their dollar-priced menu offerings. Wendy's, deciding its Biggie drink wasn't biggie enough, recently began offering sodas in 42-ounce cups. Great, a beverage I can swim in.In the face of criticism drummed up by "Super Size Me"—and the 2001 book "Fast Food Nation," the film version of which will appear in theaters this fall—the industry has executed a marvelous bit of jujitsu, marketing even more heinous concoctions as manly, red-state antidotes to froufrou girlie food that would be imposed by the meddlesome big-government lunch lady. I love the Burger King ad for the Texas Double Whopper in which a mob of men burns its tighty whities, waving signs that say "Eat This Meat" and singing, to the tune of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman": "I am man, I am incorrigible, and I'm way too hungry to settle for chick food."There is no shortage of fast-food travesties by which to be astonished. Consider the Carl's Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger, weighing in at a heart-plugging 1,420 calories, 101 grams of fat and 2.4 grams of sodium. A ballpark in St. Louis offers a bacon-cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut (which doesn't sound half-bad, actually). The Southern California restaurant chain The Hat serves French fries in a paper grocery bag and a Pastrami Burger the size of a moose's head. It's the only place I know where meat is a condiment.Compared to these offerings, the Famous Bowls (710 calories, with 29 grams of fat and 2 grams of sodium) are relatively healthy. And so what if it's all in one bowl? NASA used to serve astronauts Thanksgiving meals in a squeeze tube.And yet I remain appalled—as well as a little woozy from all the salt. It's one thing to say Americans eat like pigs, it's another to give it the force of literalism. But that's just what the trough-like Famous Bowls do. If there were a Food Court at The Hague, the Colonel would be in big trouble.

Just a little Spring Break Fun? Or the new society?

Middle East War Escalates

Waves of warplanes thundering through the darkness bombed Beirut's southern suburbs for hours early Sunday, a day after Israel stepped up its air strikes and tightened a noose around the reeling nation.
The Israeli air force on Saturday hit strongholds of the Hezbollah Shiite Muslim guerrilla group, bombed central Beirut for the first time, and pounded seaports and a key bridge. Then, after midnight and until 2:30 a.m., about 18 powerful explosions rocked southern Beirut, where Hezbollah is headquartered and much of the air assault has been aimed since cross-border hostilities erupted Wednesday.
Israeli jets could be heard over the city, much of it darkened because airstrikes have knocked out power stations and the fuel depots feeding them.
Warplanes bombed the Jiyeh power station about 12 miles south of Beirut on Sunday. Firefighters said they didn't have enough water to put out the fire and appealed on Lebanese radio for people who own water tanks to help.
Hezbollah's TV aired footage showing two long columns of smoke rising from buildings into the night sky. Much of Shiite-populated southern Beirut was deserted, its residents having fled east to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
Trying to defuse the violence, which began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid, Lebanon's prime minister indicated he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah _ a move that might risk civil war.
In a more ominous sign that the struggle could spread, Israel accused Iran of helping launch a missile that damaged an Israeli warship, a charge both Hezbollah and Iran denied.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, fired barrages of rockets ever deeper into Israel.
Several rockets launched by Lebanese guerillas pounded the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday, killing nine people and wounding many others, police said.
Rockets fired by Lebanese militants also hit the northern town of Acco, and residents of the region were told to head to bomb shelters.
The death toll in the four-day-old conflict rose above 100 in Lebanon, and stood at 15 in Israel. Hezbollah denied Israeli media reports that its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, was hurt in an airstrike Sunday, the Al-Jazeera television said.
Despite worldwide alarm, there was little indication either Western or Arab nations could muster a quick diplomatic solution. In New York, Lebanon accused the United States of blocking a U.N. Security Council statement calling for a cease-fire. Diplomats said Washington for now preferred to see the issue dealt with at this weekend's Group of Eight meeting in Russia and in other ways.
The United States and France, meantime, prepared to evacuate their citizens, and Britain dispatched an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean in apparent preparation for evacuations.
Choking back tears, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora went on television to plead with the United Nations to broker a cease-fire for his "disaster-stricken nation."
The Western-backed prime minister, criticizing both Israel and Hezbollah, also pledged to reassert government authority over all Lebanese territory, suggesting his government might deploy the Lebanese army in the south, which Hezbollah effectively controls.
That would meet a repeated U.N. and U.S. demand. But any effort by Saniora's Sunni Muslim-led government to use force against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrillas could trigger another bloody civil war in Lebanon. Many fear the 70,000-strong army itself might break up along sectarian lines, as it did during the 1975-90 civil war.
Reacting to Saniora's statements, Israel's Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Lebanon must prove it was serious by deploying troops on the border.
"We have to see what they do and not what they say," Peres told Israel's Channel 2 TV.
Iran, meanwhile, denied any role in the fighting, disputing Israeli claims that 100 Iranian soldiers had helped Hezbollah attack an Israeli warship late Friday.
There has been no sign in Lebanon of Iranian Revolutionary Guards for 15 years. But Iran is one of Hezbollah's principal backers along with Syria, providing weapons, money and political support. Many believe Iran and Syria are fueling the battle to show their strength in the region.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again condemned Israel's Lebanon offensive Saturday, telling Tehran's state television, "The Zionist regime behaves like Hitler."
In Indonesia, about 5,000 Muslims from a large Islamic political party protested Sunday in Jakarta against Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. Some held up signs saying "Israel is the real terrorist," while others waved Palestinian flags.
Despite global concerns, there were few signs of diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting.
President Bush, on a trip to Russia, said it was up to Hezbollah "to lay down its arms and to stop attacking." But Russian President Vladimir Putin urged a balanced approach by Israel and said it appeared the nation was pursuing wider goals than the return of abducted soldiers.
Arab foreign ministers, meeting in Cairo, adopted a resolution calling for U.N. Security Council intervention. But moderates led by Saudi Arabia, bickering with Syria and other backers of Hezbollah, denounced the Lebanese guerrilla group's actions in provoking the latest conflict.
In one sign the West expects a drawn-out battle, the U.S. Embassy said it was looking into ways to get Americans in Lebanon to Cyprus. France said it had already decided to send a ferry from Cyprus to evacuate thousands of its nationals. The British were sending two warships, including the carrier Illustrious, toward Lebanon, in apparent preparation for evacuations.
In all, 33 people were killed in Lebanon on Saturday, police said. That raised the Lebanese death toll in the four-day Israeli offensive to 106, mostly civilians. On the Israeli side, at least 15 have been killed, four civilians and 11 soldiers.
Israeli warplanes demolished the last bridge on the main Beirut- Damascus highway _ over the Litani River, six miles from the Syrian border _ trying to complete their seal on Lebanon.
Four days into the Israeli offensive, Lebanese themselves remained divided over Hezbollah's operation: Some angry and terrified, others proud.
"No one has stood up to Israel the way the resistance (Hezbollah) has," said a 33-year-old housewife, Laila Remeiti, one of about 130 people who have taken refuge at a Beirut government school.
But the toll across the country was clear, with bridges, seaports, military coastal radars and Hezbollah offices all attacked in intensive air raids and sea bombardments Saturday:
_Fleeing refugees, including women and children, were cut down on a road adjacent to the Lebanese-Israeli border in an airstrike as they left the village of Marwaheen. The bodies of several children, one headless, were sprawled on the ground. Police said 15 were killed in the afternoon attack and an Associated Press photographer counted 12 bodies in the two cars.
_At least three civilians were killed when another Israeli airstrike hit a bridge near the Syrian border, cutting the last land link on the main road to Syria and its capital, Damascus.
_In the afternoon, Israeli forces hit central Beirut, striking the port and a lighthouse on a posh seafront boulevard, a few hundred yards from the campus of the American University of Beirut. The seaport is adjacent to downtown Beirut, a district rebuilt at a cost of billions of dollars after the 1975-1990 civil war.
_The brunt of the onslaught focused more and more on Hezbollah's top leadership in south Beirut and the eastern city of Baalbek. Ambulances raced to a Baalbek residential neighborhood where black smoke rose from airstrikes. Israel also targeted the headquarters compound of Hezbollah's leadership in a crowded Shiite neighborhood of south Beirut for the second straight day.
Hezbollah in turn struck out repeatedly at Israel. Its rockets hit Tiberias three times on Saturday, the first attack on the city _ 22 miles from Lebanon _ since the 1973 Mideast war. At least two houses were directly hit, but only a few light injuries were reported, medics said.
Residents were ordered into bomb shelters, and Israeli media reported that hundreds of tourists were fleeing the city. Police used megaphones to urge bathers at the Sea of Galilee to seek shelter.
On Israel's second front, against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft on Saturday struck the Economy Ministry of the Hamas-led Palestinian government and three other targets, killing two people, Palestinian and Israeli officials reported.
Early Sunday, Israeli troops, tanks and attack helicopters were back inside the Gaza Strip again firing missiles and exchanging gunfire with armed Palestinians, signaling that the large-scale operation that began after a soldier was captured last month is still in full swing.
Israeli tanks entered the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, across the border from an Israeli town, Sderot, frequently hit by Hamas guerrilla rockets. Despite the incursion, militants fired two missiles that landed in Sderot, an AP Television cameraman reported. There was no immediate word on damage or casualties.
Three Hamas gunmen were killed in the renewed Gaza fighting, Hamas said. At least 11 people were wounded in Israeli airstrikes in Beit Hanoun, including a child, hospital officials said.
Israel attacked Gaza on June 28, three days after Hamas-backed militants killed two soldiers and captured a third at an army post just inside Israel.

I can no longer play the violin, but what's better than this, to listen to as Rome burns around us...?

ISRAEL ATTACKS BEIRUT AIRPORT

JERUSALEM (July 13) - Israeli planes attacked the runways of Beirut International Airport early Thursday, Israeli Army Radio reported, starting off a second day of attacks after Hezbollah guerrillas carried out a cross-border raid, capturing two soldiers.
In fighting on Wednesday eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese were killed.
Meeting in emergency session late Wednesday, Israel's Cabinet resolved to "respond with the necessary severity to this act of aggression, and it will indeed do so," according to a statement. Israel Radio reported that the Cabinet authorized the military to move Hezbollah away from the border, possibly setting the stage for a prolonged operation, Israel's first in Lebanon since it withdrew in 2000 following an 18-year occupation of the south.
The Army Radio report said the object of the attack on Beirut airport was to shut down air traffic in and out of the Lebanese capital.
Overnight, Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli military bases along the border, the military said. Also, an Israeli civilian was wounded by a rocket explosion in the border village of Zarit. His condition was not known.
Hezbollah's brazen raid early Wednesday, attacking two Israeli army vehicles, killing three soldiers and snatching two, opened a second front for the Israeli army, which is now fighting Islamic militants in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, where it is looking for another soldier who was captured more than two weeks ago by Hamas-linked militants.
Hitting hard on the Gaza front, an Israeli plane bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City early Thursday, collapsing part of the structure and causing widespread damage in the area.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an airstrike on the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, noting that it is "led by Hamas." The Palestinian foreign minister is Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Hezbollah raid an "act of war" by Lebanon.
Following the full Cabinet meeting, Olmert met with senior ministers and brought up the threat of Hezbollah's long-range missiles that threaten all of northern Israel. "We didn't chose to deal with it now, but new reality forces us deal with it," he said, according to participants.
Residents of northern Israeli towns spent the night in underground bomb shelters as Hezbollah, an anti-Israel guerrilla group that essentially runs southern Lebanon, launched rockets across the border.
Jubilant Hezbollah supporters and Palestinians in Lebanon fired guns in the air and set off firecrackers at the news of the soldiers' capture.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would free the soldiers only in a prisoner swap, adding that he was open to a package deal that would include the release of the soldier held captive in Gaza.
"The capture of the two soldiers could provide a solution to the Gaza crisis," he told reporters in Beirut.
Analysts in Lebanon said Hezbollah also might have launched the raid and confronted Israel to improve its standing in the Arab world and at home, where the militants have come under pressure to disarm.
Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the attack in Lebanon, hoping it would force Israel to shift its focus away from them.
"People are cheering this attack in Gaza because they view it as a kind of revenge and reprisal against what Israel has been doing in Gaza," said Salah Bardawil, a spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament. "Militarily, by opening a new front against Israel , it would ease the pressure on us."
An Israeli military official disputed that theory, saying the army had no intention of moving any of its forces from the Gaza theater. The troops already on the northern border would deal with the conflict with Lebanon, backed by other reinforcements if needed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss troop movements.
Israel and Lebanon have a long history of conflict, punctuated by a full-scale Israeli invasion in 1982, and its 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that was intended to prevent attacks on northern Israel. The United Nations certified that Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon was complete, but Lebanon laid claim to a small sliver of border territory that the U.N. said was actually part of Syria.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria and branded a terror group by the United States and Israel, used the dispute to justify continued cross-border attacks, but the fighting Wednesday was by far the worst since Israel withdrew six years ago, and it threatened to further escalate.
"This is a terrorist attack and it is clearly timed to exacerbate already high tensions in the region and sow further violence," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones. "We also hold Syria and Iran - which directly support Hezbollah _ responsible for this attack and for the ensuing violence."
Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa denied his country had a role in either of the abductions and blamed Israel for the attacks. "For sure, the occupation (of the Palestinian territories) is the cause provoking both Lebanese and Palestinian people, and that's why there is Lebanese and Palestinian resistance," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the attack undermined regional stability, adding that she spoke to Israeli and Lebanese officials as well as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss the incident.
Annan called for restraint. "We would not want to see an expansion, an escalation, of conflict in the region," he said.
The eight soldiers killed made up the single highest number of Israeli military casualties since the army's offensive in the West Bank town of Jenin on April 9, 2002, which left 14 soldiers dead.
Israel also sent warplanes deep into southern Lebanon - targeting bridges, roads and Hezbollah positions. The military said it attacked 40 targets to stop Hezbollah from moving the soldiers. Dozens of ground troops also entered southwestern Lebanon, near where the soldiers were snatched, witnesses said.
Israeli troops shot a Hezbollah guerrilla later Wednesday as he tried to cross the border, the Israeli army said.

ISRAEL DECLARES WAR

Israel bombed and shelled southern Lebanon and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years Wednesday after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers. The fighting killed eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese.
Hezbollah's brazen cross-border raid opened a second front for the Israeli army. The army is now fighting Islamic militants in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, where it is looking for another soldier who was captured more than two weeks ago by Hamas-linked militants. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Hezbollah raid an "act of war" by Lebanon and threatened "very, very, very painful" retaliation. The Cabinet, meeting in the wake of the military's highest daily death toll in four years, decided to continue the army operation and call on the international community to disarm Hezbollah, according to participants. Hezbollah, an anti-Israel guerrilla group that essentially runs southern Lebanon, launched rockets across the border throughout the day.
Two Lebanese civilians and a Hezbollah fighter also were killed in the border violence. Still, jubilant Hezbollah supporters and Palestinians in Lebanon fired guns in the air and set off firecrackers at the news of the soldiers' capture.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he would free the Israeli soldiers only in a prisoner swap, adding that he was open to a package deal that would include the release of the soldier held in Gaza.
"The capture of the two soldiers could provide a solution to the Gaza crisis," he told reporters in Beirut.
At least 23 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Wednesday. And an Israeli airstrike early Thursday destroyed the building housing the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Foreign Ministry. Palestinian medics said 13 people in the neighborhood, including six children, were injured, mainly from flying glass and debris.
Analysts in Lebanon said Hezbollah also might have launched the raid to improve its standing in the Arab world and at home, where the militants have come under pressure to disarm.
That crisis began June 25 when Palestinian militants dug a tunnel out of the Gaza Strip and attacked an army position inside Israel, seizing Cpl. Gilad Shalit and demanding the release of 1,500 prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel has made prisoner exchanges in the past, Olmert ruled out any negotiations for Shalit's return, saying that would only encourage more kidnappings.
Instead, Israel unleashed an offensive against Gaza, sending in troops, firing artillery and carrying out airstrikes on militant targets in an effort to force the Palestinians to free Shalit.
In an attempt to assassinate top Hamas fugitives Wednesday, Israel dropped a quarter-ton bomb on a home in Gaza City, killing a couple and seven of their children, ages 4-18. Hamas said its leaders escaped harm, but militants took over the intensive care unit of a hospital, barring reporters.
Palestinian security officials said Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas' military wing and No. 1 on Israel's wanted list for more than a decade, was among the wounded _ suffering severe back injuries that could paralyze him. At least 14 other Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli attacks Wednesday.
Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the attack in Lebanon, hoping it would force Israel to shift its focus away from them.
"People are cheering this attack ... because they view it as a kind of revenge and reprisal against what Israel has been doing in Gaza," said Salah Bardawil, a spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament. "Militarily, by opening a new front against Israel, it would ease the pressure on us. Israel is using a huge force in Gaza now. It will have to use part of its military capacity in Lebanon."
However, an Israeli military official said the army had no intention of moving any forces from the Gaza theater. The troops already on the northern border would deal with the conflict with Lebanon, backed by reinforcements if needed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss troop movements.
Israel and Lebanon have a history of conflict, punctuated by a full- scale Israeli invasion in 1982, and its 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that was intended to prevent attacks on Israel. The United Nations certified that Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon was complete, but Lebanon laid claim to a sliver of border territory, still held by Israel, that the U.N. said was actually part of Syria.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria and branded a terror group by the U.S. and Israel, used the dispute to justify cross-border attacks. But the fighting Wednesday was by far the worst since Israel withdrew six years ago, and it threatened to escalate.
"This is a terrorist attack and it is clearly timed to exacerbate already high tensions in the region and sow further violence," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said. "We also hold Syria and Iran _ which directly support Hezbollah _ responsible for this attack and for the ensuing violence."
Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa denied his country had a role in either of the abductions and instead blamed Israel. "For sure, the occupation (of the Palestinian territories) is the cause provoking both the Lebanese and Palestinian people, and that's why there is Lebanese and Palestinian resistance," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for restraint. "We would not want to see an expansion, an escalation, of conflict in the region," he said.
He also condemned "without reservations the attack" by Hezbollah fighters. Annan at first said he condemned the violence in southern Lebanon, but his aides later said he meant Hezbollah's cross-border attack into Israel.
Hezbollah fighters began their attack Wednesday by firing a barrage of rockets at communities in northwestern Israel. The guerrillas then crossed the border and launched a surprise attack on two Israeli Humvees, killing three soldiers, wounding two and capturing the two others, the Israeli army said.
Israel quickly sent armored vehicles over the border on a rescue mission, but one of the tanks rolled over a large mine, killing the four soldiers inside and sparking a battle that killed another soldier, the army said.
Israel also sent warplanes deep into southern Lebanon _ targeting bridges, roads and Hezbollah positions. One blast hit a major junction along the main north-south coastal highway, wrecking the road and wounding two people. Two civilians were killed in the attacks, Lebanese officials said. Another airstrike targeted a Palestinian guerrilla base south of Beirut, Lebanese security officials said.
Israeli artillery and gunboats fired into the area as well. The military said it attacked 40 targets to stop Hezbollah from moving the soldiers. It did not say how many ground troops were involved, but witnesses said dozens entered southwestern Lebanon.
Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned that the assault would widen, Israeli TV reported. If the soldiers are not returned, he said, the military would target infrastructure and "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years."

SUNDAY FUNNIES

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GEORGE GETS DUPED!

President Bush has decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, administration officials said yesterday, reversing decades of bipartisan policy in a move that would be worth billions of dollars to Moscow but could provoke an uproar in Congress.
Bush resisted such a move for years, insisting that Russia first stop building a nuclear power station for Iran near the Persian Gulf. But U.S. officials have shifted their view of Russia's collaboration with Iran and concluded that President Vladimir Putin has become a more constructive partner in trying to pressure Tehran to give up any aspirations for nuclear weapons.
The president plans to announce his decision at a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg next Saturday before the annual summit of leaders from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, officials said. The statement to be released by the two presidents would agree to start negotiations for the formal agreement required under U.S. law before the United States can engage in civilian nuclear cooperation.
In the administration's view, both sides would benefit. A nuclear cooperation agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world, a lucrative business so far blocked by Washington. It could be used as an incentive to win more Russian cooperation on Iran. And it would be critical to Bush's plan to spread civilian nuclear energy to power-hungry countries because Russia would provide a place to send the used radioactive material.
At the same time, it could draw significant opposition from across the ideological spectrum, according to analysts who follow the issue. Critics wary of Putin's authoritarian course view it as rewarding Russia even though Moscow refuses to support sanctions against Iran. Others fearful of Russia's record of handling nuclear material see it as a reckless move that endangers the environment.
"You will have all the anti-Russian right against it, you will have all the anti-nuclear left against it, and you will have the Russian democracy center concerned about it too," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear specialist at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Since Russia is already a nuclear state, such an agreement, once drafted, presumably would conform to the Atomic Energy Act and therefore would not require congressional approval. Congress could reject it only with majority votes by both houses within 90 legislative days.
Administration officials confirmed the president's decision yesterday only after it was first learned from outside nuclear experts privy to the situation. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the agreement before the summit.
The prospect, however, has been hinted at during public speeches in recent days. "We certainly will be talking about nuclear energy," Assistant Energy Secretary Karen A. Harbert told a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event Thursday. "We need alternatives to hydrocarbons."
New era of cooperationSome specialists said Bush's decision marks a milestone in U.S.-Russian relations, despite tension over Moscow's retreat from democracy and pressure on neighbors. "It signals that there's a sea change in the attitude toward Russia, that they're someone we can try to work with on Iran," said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy Department official in the Clinton administration who now directs the Carnegie Moscow Center. "It bespeaks a certain level of confidence in the Russians by this administration that hasn't been there before."
But others said the deal seems one-sided. "Just what exactly are we getting? That's the real mystery," said Henry D. Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Until now, he noted, the United States has insisted on specific actions by Russia to prevent Iran from developing bombs. "We're not getting any of that. We're getting an opportunity to give them money."
Environmentalists have denounced Russia's plans to transform itself into the world's nuclear dump. The country has a history of nuclear accidents and contamination. Its transportation network is antiquated and inadequate for moving vast quantities of radioactive material, critics say. And the country, they add, has not fully secured the nuclear facilities it already has against theft or accidents.
The United States has civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with the European atomic energy agency, along with China, Japan, Taiwan and 20 other countries. Bush recently sealed an agreement with India, which does require congressional approval because of that nation's unsanctioned weapons program.
Russia has sought such an agreement with the United States since the 1990s, when it began thinking about using its vast land mass to store much of the world's spent nuclear fuel. Estimating that it could make as much as $20 billion, Russia enacted a law in 2001 permitting the import, temporary storage and reprocessing of foreign nuclear fuel, despite 90 percent opposition in public opinion polls.
But the plan went nowhere. The United States controls spent fuel from nuclear material it provides, even in foreign countries, and Bunn estimates that as much as 95 percent of the potential world market for Russia was under U.S. jurisdiction. Without a cooperation agreement, none of the material could be sent to Russia, even though allies such as South Korea and Taiwan are eager to ship spent fuel there.
Like President Bill Clinton before him, Bush refused to consider it as long as Russia was helping Iran with its nuclear program. In the summer of 2002, according to Bunn, Bush sent Putin a letter saying an agreement could be reached only if "the central problem of assistance to Iran's missile, nuclear and advanced conventional weapons programs" was solved.
The concern over the nuclear reactor under construction at Bushehr, however, has faded. Russia agreed to provide all fuel to the facility and take it back once used, meaning it could not be turned into material for nuclear bombs. U.S. officials who once suspected that Russian scientists were secretly behind Iran's weapons program learned that critical assistance to Tehran came from Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.
The 2002 disclosure that Iran had secret nuclear sites separate from Bushehr shocked both the U.S. and Russian governments and seemed to harden Putin's stance toward Iran. He eventually agreed to refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council and signed on to a package of incentives and penalties recently sent to Tehran. At the same time, he has consistently opposed economic sanctions, military action or even tougher diplomatic language by the council, much to the frustration of U.S. officials.
Opening negotiations for a formal nuclear cooperation agreement could be used as a lever to move Putin further. Talks will inevitably take months, and the review in Congress will extend the process. If during that time Putin resists stronger measures against Iran, analysts said, the deal could unravel or critics on Capitol Hill could try to muster enough opposition to block it. If Putin proves cooperative on Iran, they said, it could ease the way toward final approval.
"This was one of the few areas where there was big money involved that you could hold over the Russians," said George Perkovich, an arms-control specialist and vice president of the Carnegie Endowment. "It's a handy stick, a handy thing to hold over the Russians."
Bush has an interest in taking the agreement all the way as well. His new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership envisions promoting civilian nuclear power around the world and eventually finding a way to reprocess spent fuel without the danger of leaving behind material that could be used for bombs. Until such technology is developed, Bush needs someplace to store the spent fuel from overseas, and Russia is the only volunteer.
"The Russians could make a lot of money importing foreign spent fuel, some of our allies would desperately like to be able to send their fuel to Russia, and maybe we could use the leverage to get other things done," such as "getting the Russians to be more forward-leaning on Iran," Bunn said.

WASHINGTON BABYLON

California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty. He is now in jail, but his case exposed a world of bribery, booze, and broads that reaches into the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and Congress. Washington is wondering: Who's next?

By JUDY BACHRACH

The corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"—an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. A former Vietnam naval pilot who was awarded two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart, Cunningham, now 64, appropriated John Wayne's nickname and first ran for the House with the slogan "A congressman we can be proud of." Indeed, from the moment he arrived in Washington, in 1991, he made it his business to seem larger than life, telling people that his wartime heroics had inspired episodes in the movie Top Gun. His military service and expertise eventually earned him a place on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, with vast sway over the military budget, as well as on the intelligence committee, which oversees the C.I.A. and other spy agencies. Ever ready to defend the integrity of the armed forces, as he saw it, Duke excoriated Democrats who wanted to cut the defense budget, calling them the same people "who would put homos in the military."
But in November, Cunningham's heroic image came crashing down, and his swagger evaporated when he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in exchange for pressuring the Pentagon to buy their products and services. The government believes he was bribed chiefly by two men, identified in court documents as "co-conspirator No. 1" and "co-conspirator No. 2," now known to be Brent Wilkes and his protégé Mitchell Wade. (Wilkes has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes in this case.) The products they hawked—computer software to scan and convert military maps, drawings, and documents into digital format—lacked glamour, perhaps, but they made the two entrepreneurs and Cunningham wealthy, arrogant, and even reckless, courtesy of a compliant Pentagon. Wilkes's two dozen or so firms, in California and Virginia, raked in $100 million over the last decade, while Wade's Washington-based MZM Inc. has gotten $150 million since 2002.
According to prosecutors, Wilkes and Wade generously remunerated Duke Cunningham for steering government business their way. Wilkes, prosecutors allege, gave Cunningham more than $600,000 in bribes, including two checks totaling $100,000 and $525,000 to pay off a mortgage. (Wilkes, through his attorney, denies these allegations.) In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham with over $1 million—but he operated with more panache, indulging Cunningham's taste for outsize antiques. The trove he offered included Persian and Indian rugs, sleek Louis-Philippe and Restoration commodes, a $24,000 Victorian china hutch, leaded-glass cabinets, and silver candlesticks worth $5,600. "Duke liked his antiques big and he liked them expensive," explains a Maryland antiques dealer, who despaired of his taste. (Duke got other gifts as well: a secondhand Rolls-Royce and the use of Wade's 42-foot boat, renamed the Duke-Stir.)
The truth is no one knows if the $2.4 million in bribes Cunningham has admitted taking in his guilty plea is the final total. Duke's been at it for some time. In fact, right up to the end, the Maryland antiques dealer tells me, Cunningham was trying to get her to put one of his valuable 19th-century armoires in storage, "anywhere, he didn't care where," as long as it was far from the government's prying eyes. "Very immature, thinking the rules of the game didn't apply to him," the dealer says. But why should they? For years he had been running the game. (Cunningham's attorney, K. Lee Blalack II, refuses to comment on the substance of the case.)
In March, Cunningham was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison—the harshest sentence ever received by an ex-congressman for corruption. But the investigations are far from over, and allegations continue to surface implicating other legislators and government officials. California Republican congressman Jerry Lewis, head of the House committee on appropriations, is currently being investigated. So is Wilkes's best friend from high-school days, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who was until recently No. 3 at the C.I.A., and who is alleged to have accepted lavish favors from Wilkes—a trip to a Honolulu estate, for instance, renting for $50,000 per week—in exchange for arranging lucrative C.I.A. contracts for his friend. (Wilkes, Lewis, and Foggo have denied any wrongdoing.) Republican congresswoman and senatorial candidate Katherine Harris, of Florida, a source familiar with her activities tells me, is also being scrutinized for her dealings with Wade—in particular, for receiving $32,000 in illegal campaign donations, and for a lavish dinner she enjoyed last year for which he paid more than $3,300. (Harris says that she did not know the donations were illegal and has since given the money to charity.) In addition, Wade, who is cooperating with the authorities, has told the F.B.I. that Wilkes kept hospitality suites in the Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand in order to entertain legislators and government officials with evenings of poker, cigars, and, on occasion, for Cunningham, prostitutes.
Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.
"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations. "Many felonies went undetected because in the Defense Department a lot goes on in secret, and these crimes grew in the shadow of both 9/11 and one-party rule—with little scrutiny. So what you're looking at is a world where money, secrecy, sex, and indulgence were all in play. Where everyone is guilty of something."
n June 2004—in the middle of the Caucus Room, a crowded Washington restaurant—Cunningham accepted a fat envelope from Wade. "What's in it?" asked David Heil, Cunningham's chief of staff. Money to repair the Duke-Stir, $6,500 in cash, Cunningham told him. Several months later the aide, who had long been concerned about his boss's misdeeds—so much so that he personally checked Cunningham's real-estate records in California—begged Cunningham to resign. "This is stupid! It's insane!" the aide supposedly said. "I would bet my own house this whole thing will come out." Cunningham listened to this lecture, silent and shamefaced, but he didn't resign. Instead, his chief of staff did.
Heil's prediction came true when Marcus Stern, of the Copley News Service, broke a story last spring in The San Diego Union-Tribune about a very profitable real-estate transaction Duke made in 2003. That year the congressman bought a new, $2.6 million house in Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic area of estates in the northwestern part of his district, in San Diego County. To do so he sold his old house, in Del Mar, to Wade for $1.675 million. This was $700,000 more than it was worth. In fact, Wade, who never moved into the house, sold it for that much less nine months later.
Subsequent stories about Cunningham in The San Diego Union-Tribune (which shared a 2006 Pulitzer Prize with the Copley News Service for superb reporting on the Cunningham scandal) were followed by intense interest in the congressman by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. Last year, this caused him to sink into a depression that included thoughts of suicide. He wasn't wholly to blame for his troubles, Cunningham later told Saul Faerstein, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. He'd been led astray, his "moral and religious values" perverted by unwholesome friends. "He recognizes now that Wade and others in Washington were part of a culture of corruption," wrote Faerstein, an expert for the defense in the O. J. Simpson trial, who was hired by Cunningham's lawyer in an effort to obtain a lighter sentence for his client. "He is troubled he didn't see the motives of the people he trusted." In fact, Faerstein wrote to the court, he found Cunningham "naïve in some ways, always trying to see the best qualities in people."
Do you know that Cunningham wrote a "bribe menu," detailing how many hundreds of thousands he should be paid for defense contracts, right under the bald eagle on his House of Representatives stationery? I ask the psychiatrist. Did Duke tell you he tried to inveigle innocent people into covering up his moneymaking schemes? "That was certainly quite damning…. But I never heard about that until later," says the psychiatrist. "I asked Cunningham's lawyer, 'Why didn't you provide me with that information?' They told me they gave me what I needed…. I am not very happy I didn't know all the facts." (Blalack says, "We made available to Dr. Faerstein all of the evidence that was in our possession.")
So, even as he was pleading guilty, Duke wasn't straight with you? I ask. "No," says Faerstein. "If I'd known about those things, I would have seen he was not so much influenced by the culture of corruption as part of the culture of corruption."
hen he tearfully informed the psychiatrist that he "came to Washington to do good" and that for most of his tenure he "did good and was not involved in illegal or unethical conduct," Cunningham probably believed every syllable. The son of a Union Oil truckdriver, he was born in Los Angeles and grew up in rural Missouri, where, according to Faerstein's psychiatric evaluation, he was "raised with traditional values," doing farm work, such as forking hay and driving tractors. As a young man, Cunningham worked as a teacher and swimming coach. He married twice, the first time in his senior year of college to Susan Albrecht. They adopted a son, Todd, now 37, who in 1997 was arrested for possession with intent to distribute 400 pounds of marijuana. Cunningham and Susan were divorced in 1973. A year later he married his current wife, Nancy. The couple has two daughters, April, 27, and Carrie, 24. Both Cunningham families appear to have suffered from Duke's long absences. In court for Todd's marijuana sentencing, he admitted he had spent only a month a year with his son after he and his wife divorced, and April Cunningham, now a librarian, recently declared in court papers, "My father was often not with my family throughout my childhood."
In 1967, Cunningham joined the navy, where he became a fighter pilot. It was Vietnam, where he flew an F-4 Phantom, that changed his life and ambitions. In May 1972, he shot down five North Vietnamese MiGs to become the war's first "ace." Around this time he took the pilot call sign "Duke." It was a name he kept on his return to civilian life, in 1987. Faerstein believes it symbolizes both his strength and his undoing: "'Duke' became an outsized personification of Randall Cunningham," Faerstein wrote. "It is possible that his extraordinary deeds in the service planted a subconscious sense of entitlement."
That "outsized personification" would mark every step of Cunningham's political career. Two years after his election to Congress he announced that the liberal leadership of the House should be "lined up and shot." During a debate on Bosnia, he engaged in a physical scuffle (broken up by Capitol police) with Representative James Moran, a Virginia Democrat. In 1997, when Cunningham's suspicious enthusiasm for projects going to Brent Wilkes's companies was noted by the press, the congressman stated, "I'm on the side of the angels here." Anyone who questioned his intentions, said Duke, can "go to hell."
Cunningham is believed to have been introduced to Wilkes, now 51, in the early 90s by Congressman Bill Lowery (whose seat Cunningham would fill after Lowery and his wife were discovered to have written 300 bad checks on the House bank). Wilkes's father, like Cunningham a naval pilot, was killed in a 1959 accident while taking off from an aircraft carrier. Wilkes grew up poor, raised by his widowed mother near a San Diego naval base. At San Diego State University, he roomed with his high-school football buddy Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, and both were active in the Young Republicans, as was Lowery. After graduation, Wilkes moved to Washington, D.C., where, I am told, he accompanied groups of congressmen, including Lowery, to fly down to Central America to hang out with Dusty Foggo, by then a C.I.A. agent who was working with the contras to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Every time Wilkes was asked by Tom Casey, a California defense contractor who would eventually work with him, how he got to be so friendly with Lowery and other congressmen, the answer was always the same, Casey tells me: "Honduras." Specifically, Casey adds, Wilkes described sexual encounters between congressmen and women from Honduran villages. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports similar recollections, attributing them to three of Wilkes's former friends. (Through his attorney Nancy Luque, Wilkes denies having ever traveled to Honduras with congressmen. Lowery's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, says that when his client was a congressman he did indeed go "on a couple of trips with Wilkes to Central America." However, he adds, Lowery "absolutely denies being involved with any women with Wilkes." Foggo's attorney says that Foggo never met congressmen in Honduras.)
By the early 1990s, Wilkes had returned to California, where he was "beyond broke," recalls Casey. "He lived in a rented house and carpooled in a Chevy Cavalier." It was at this point that Wilkes began to work with Casey at Audre, Inc., a Rancho Bernardo producer of automated document-conversion systems (with defense applications). Casey, the firm's founder and C.E.O., says he paid him about $90,000 a year to market the product and to lobby Washington officials and legislators. On trips to Washington, Casey recalls, Wilkes was able to usher him into the presence of important members of the armed-services and appropriations committees, including, most notably, Lowery and Lowery's closest friend on the latter, fellow California Republican Jerry Lewis, now 71. The genteel Lewis and the earthy Lowery reportedly loved to dine and even vacation together. "Everyone on the defense committee always works cooperatively," says Casey, who realized pretty quickly that no money came his way without their support. "It was team play, and they emphasized that to me constantly."
Wilkes also introduced Casey to Dusty Foggo, who often passed through Washington. Around 1994, during a visit to a Washington strip club, Casey says, Foggo wore a gun in a shoulder holster and flashed his identification at the club doorman. He was promptly seated by the stage. "Foggo sits there the whole night telling me how he likes to fuck girls in the ass," Casey recalls. "He sees a girl there, he jabs you and says, 'She's ready to go—let's double-team her.' The weirdest combination of sex and domination! And Wilkes, he's just laughing the whole time." (Through an attorney, Foggo says that this incident never happened. According to his lawyer, Wilkes denies visiting strip clubs in adulthood.)
asey says that Wilkes soon felt cocky enough to ask him for $148,000 a month for a Washington office, with complete discretionary control of funds. He also wanted to rent hotel "hospitality suites" for congressmen, the idea being, as Casey recalls, "these are fun-loving guys, they get tired of being in an office all day, and yet they have to be in proximity of the Capitol to vote. So we'll have booze and bedrooms for them to sleep in." Casey and two former Audre executives say that this plan was vetoed, as was, says Casey, the two million Audre share options Wilkes had requested. (Wilkes's attorney responds: "There may have been a discussion about creating [an office]. The funds would have been for technical and program-management people…. Audre offered Wilkes stock as an incentive plan, but he never received any." And "there is no truth" to the hospitality-suite allegation. She adds, "Nothing Casey says can be relied upon.… He apparently harbors ill will towards Wilkes for leaving Audre behind to become successful.")
Wilkes left Audre and in 1995 launched a competing firm, ADCS. Soon he started giving money to Cunningham's campaign and PAC. It didn't take long to get the desired results, especially after Cunningham obtained a seat on the defense-appropriations subcommittee, in 1997. In July 1999, the government says, Wilkes wrote for Cunningham's benefit a memo helpfully entitled "Talking Points," a copy of which is in court documents. Printed in capital letters, the memo is written in a tone edged with all the righteous rage felt by the author. "WE NEED $10 M[ILLION] MORE IMMEDIATELY," Cunningham was to instruct a Pentagon official. "THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AND IF YOU CANNOT RESOLVE THIS, OTHERS WILL BE CALLING ALSO." (Wilkes's attorney would not comment.) It is unknown if any calls were made, but Cunningham and Lewis held a joint press conference in Washington to announce they were cutting nearly $2 billion from the F-22 Raptor fighter-jet program, which both had initially supported. Shortly thereafter, $5 million more was allocated by the military for Wilkes's company, and in October most of the F-22 money was restored. (Through his spokesman, Lewis says he was unaware of Cunningham's efforts to secure funding for ADCS.)
"The enabler in this story is the Pentagon," explains someone familiar with the investigation. "To get what it wants—the F-22, say, or better intelligence—it goes along and funds the shoddy stuff Cunningham and [Wilkes] want. It's thinking, 'Cunningham will fund the Taj Mahal of intelligence for us as long as we take care of his friends.'"
Within a year of his victorious fight with the Pentagon, Cunningham claims, he received $100,000 from Wilkes. Gone were the days when Wilkes was cash-strapped. In 1999 he and his wife, Regina, bought a $1.4 million gated home with a tennis court and pool in a suburb of San Diego. In 2003 he built an $11 million glass office building in Poway, 20 miles north of San Diego, as his business headquarters. He and Regina donated generously to his alma mater, San Diego State University, so much that until recently it was rumored that its College of Business Administration was going to name itself after him. "Boom shaka-laka!" Wilkes used to shout in his more bouyant moments, at the height of his prosperity, or, alternatively, "Yeah, baby!"
n 2000, Wilkes and ADCS became "too hot to deal with," a source familiar with the situation tells me. A Pentagon official believed they had fraudulently billed $750,000 for unfinished work scanning maps of the Panama Canal Zone. (Wilkes's lawyer declares, "If there was any fraud, Wilkes was unaware of it because he was only a subcontractor and not doing the billing.") At this point, Wilkes hired "co-conspirator No. 2," Mitchell Wade, who would act for him in winning new government contracts. Wade, now 47, was a former Pentagon intelligence official with formidable contacts in the military, lavish tastes, and—most important—a profound understanding of the "black world" of classified intelligence, which Wilkes didn't know much about. A graduate of George Washington University, Wade had been a Middle East desk officer at the Pentagon during Desert Storm and was awarded a Desert Storm medal. In 1993, he had set up the defense contracting firm MZM—a name based on the first names of his children, Matthew, Zachary, and Morgan—and although the company posted no revenue for its first six years, it flourished after that.
At first, Wade studied Wilkes carefully: "Everything he learned, he learned from Wilkes," says a friend, and the two worked together closely. In 2004, Cunningham appropriated nearly $6 million for MZM's data-storage systems, which were worth "substantially less," prosecutors claim. They were actually delivered by Wilkes's ADCS, which ended up with $4.8 million of the total.
However, after a few years as associates, Wade and Wilkes experienced a growing disaffection with each other. "Wade was carrying the subcontracts for Wilkes, and taking the political heat," I am told by a source close to Wade. In time Wade would outstrip his mentor. He threw massive parties at Washington's Four Seasons Hotel, where, one guest estimates, "it cost $200 a person: filet mignon, alcohol, champagne. He was actually smart about the image he projected."
Soon, Wade developed his own relationship with Cunningham. "Mitch, I'm going to make you somebody," Cunningham promised in November 2001, after selecting $12,000 worth of antiques paid for by his new friend, and he was true to his word: Wade did become somebody. He was able to buy a $3 million house in Washington's prized Kalorama area. His company, MZM, operated out of a beautiful four-story Victorian house on Dupont Circle, packed with 19th-century partners desks and ruby-colored Oriental rugs.
Wade paid lofty salaries—$105,000 for an entry-level job, in one case, with a promise to pay off graduate-school debts at $6,000 a year. "I told my wife it was just like John Grisham's novel The Firm," recalls one former employee. "Everything was compartmentalized, and if it wasn't your business, you had no business knowing about it."
"Absolutely, it was very secretive," Cynthia Bruno Wynkoop, who worked at MZM from 2001 until 2004, tells me. In fact, a lot of the work done by the firm was very secretive as well. Wynkoop, a lawyer, was hired out to work in Arlington, Virginia, on the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), with computer systems processing specific data. "Yes, you could call it data mining," she says.
She was troubled by her boss, though. "Of course, I was pressured to give money to certain candidates—everyone was," says Wynkoop. "[North Carolina Republican senator] Elizabeth Dole and [Virginia Republican] representative Virgil Goode—they were highly recommended." (Goode's rural district is the site of an MZM facility.) "Wade would make remarks and let you know." She says she ended up giving $1,000 to the company PAC and $500 to each candidate. Indeed, Wade would eventually inform prosecutors, he not only pressured employees to make political contributions, in violation of federal election laws, but also illegally repaid some—in cash.
wo years ago, Katherine Harris (best known as the Florida secretary of state who presided over the agonizing 2000 presidential recount, and now more obliquely known in court papers as "Rep. B") went to dinner with Wade—whom she had met through Cunningham—and subsequently got a stack of $2,000 checks for her campaign signed by his employees. Many were written on the same day. Harris would later say she had hardly any idea why—maybe they just liked her politics. (In all, Wade gave her $32,000 in illegal contributions.)
But, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Wade told Harris exactly what he wanted over the dinner, for which he paid $2,800 at Citronelle, an elegant Washington restaurant: lots of federal funding to build a $10 million counter-intelligence facility in her Florida district. They also discussed the possibility of his throwing her a fund-raiser. In vain did Ed Rollins, who was then Harris's campaign strategist, warn the congresswoman (who is not allowed to receive gifts exceeding $50) that a $2,800 dinner and a fund-raiser might be interpreted as a shady quid pro quo for snagging millions of dollars for her benefactor. "Mitch, what a special evening! The best dinner I have ever enjoyed in Washington…. Please let me know if I can ever be of assistance," a thrilled Harris wrote by hand in a letter given to me by a former MZM employee. (After insisting she had "reimbursed" the restaurant for the meal, Harris switched positions recently, saying, "I have donated to a local Florida charity $100, which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer.")
In 2005, Harris had a second dinner with Wade, for which, a friend of his tells me, he paid more than $3,300, and a few months later a Harris aide named Mona Tate Yost was hired by MZM. Although a Harris spokeswoman initially said Yost's contacts with her old congressional office were "purely on a social level," this too turned out to be false. An e-mail I have seen, written in 2005, indicates Yost had promised to approach a top Harris staffer "with a meeting." She was working on an MZM draft of a legislative-funding proposal that would, Wade hoped, underwrite his $10 million counter-intelligence facility. (Yost didn't return phone calls for comment.) An MZM employee, Kay Coles James, e-mailed the company's draft to Harris's office, which ultimately submitted it to the appropriations committee, with some of the language intact. (Possibly because Harris applied for the funding late and the request was ill-written, the money never was allocated. "I think Mitch made a mistake in trying to bribe Harris," a Capitol Hill source says, chuckling. "She's so incompetent she can't be bribed.")
t was Duke Cunningham, however, who was foremost in the thoughts of Wade's employees. The firm honored him with fund-raisers, where some found him a bombastic, boastful fellow, according to an ex-employee. "At one point, Mitch made the comment about Cunningham, 'I own him,'" recalls Richard Peze, an MZM vice president until 2003. "Here's the point I tried to make to Wade. I thought we were putting too much faith in Cunningham…. If the company was going to be successful, we had to stop relying on Wade's benefactors in Congress." Another thing bothered Peze. "I know of two instances where I believe hours were billed to the government that weren't being worked," he says, adding that last summer he talked to Pentagon investigators about his concerns.
But Wade was flying high. Indeed, for a man who was usually so secretive, he could be amazingly indiscreet. "Where's your Rolls-Royce?" one employee asked him. "Duke's driving it now—it's parked in the congressional parking lot," Wade answered. Wynkoop recalls Wade telling her he had bought the yacht, the Duke-Stir, which Cunningham was living on. "I was sitting with Mitch in the Capital Grille restaurant when he phones Duke at midnight! Who ever calls a congressman at midnight?" asks Wynkoop. "It was all very bizarre and very surreal."
Another bizarre circumstance: For a modest $140,000, I learn from the Federal Procurement Data System, MZM was hired to provide computer programming for the Executive Office of the President—a remarkable coup for Wade. One month later he paid exactly $140,000 for the Duke-Stir, which was moved to Cunningham's boatslip. "I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that," says a party to the sale. "Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it—all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away."
Cunningham was not shy about detailing his desires. Above the word "Duke" on his congressional stationery he scrawled the number 16, then the letters BT for "boat," then 140. This meant, his friend Wade later acknowledged to prosecutors, that in return for the congressman's use of the $140,000 boat Wade would get a $16 million contract. For another $50,000, Wade would get a $17 million contract—and so on.
After the news story about the sale of his Del Mar house broke, Cunningham tried to get others to cover his tracks. He called Elizabeth Todd, a local real-estate agent, and pressured her to fax him a letter claiming that 2004 was a buyers' market, a request with which Todd only reluctantly complied, since she knew it to be inaccurate. Next, he wrote a letter to Wade in which, after professing amazement at the low resale price of his former home, he offered to pay the $700,000 difference—but never did. Later that same month, he sent a $16,500 check to a dealer from whom Wade had purchased a few Oriental rugs for him. Along with the money came a handwritten note explaining that he had tried to send the dealer the check earlier, but had misaddressed the envelope. Nor was that the end of his machinations. Last July Duke phoned the Maryland antiques dealer he and Wade had patronized at least half a dozen times. Anxiously, he pleaded with her to recall that he had quietly slipped $35,000 in cash to Wade as compensation for the lavish purchases. "I never saw it, and believe me, $35,000 in cash I would remember!" the dealer tells me.
When the distraught Cunningham called her yet again—this time right before Thanksgiving, just days before he tearfully pleaded guilty—to get the dealer to put his Victorian armoire in storage, a store employee put Cunningham on speakerphone. "What's going on? Am I being taped?" the congressman demanded to know. "Has anyone 'visited' the antique store recently?"
They had, indeed. Months earlier, two female F.B.I. agents, flashing badges and demanding furniture receipts, had visited the store—because Wade had been talking to authorities since June 2005.
He had plenty to say. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Wade was also talking to investigators about his mentor, Brent Wilkes. Specifically, he claimed that Wilkes used a limousine service to ferry escorts to and from assignations with Cunningham in rented suites at Washington's Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand. Federal agents are investigating to see if any other lawmakers were involved with the escorts. (Luque responds, "Brent Wilkes never arranged prostitutes for anyone.") But a source who knows the details of the scandal suggests this is too simple an equation. "People are missing the completeness of the corruption: It wasn't 'Get me a hooker and I'll get you a defense contract from the appropriations committee,'" he says. "It's 'I will take care of you and meet your every wish, need, and fantasy, and in exchange you are going to take care of me!' Wilkes tried to corrupt completely—it was a real omertà thing. And when Mitch Wade came in later and had his relationship with Cunningham, that too moved into a broader scheme, but it was driven by Duke, asking for more and more. 'Get me the boat, the antiques—then pay the costs to move those antiques to California!'" ("This is an absolutely false picture of Brent Wilkes," who conducted his business properly, says Luque.)
Among those rumored to have attended poker nights at Wilkes's hospitality suites were C.I.A. director Porter Goss (although a spokeswoman strongly denies Goss ever went) and Wilkes's old high-school football buddy and college roommate, Dusty Foggo, by this time No. 3 at the C.I.A. Goss, who became C.I.A. director in 2004, had promoted him to executive director. Agency personnel were stunned. Foggo was "a very obscure guy," explains a former top operative. As it turned out, Foggo's sudden rise was due in part to Brant Bassett, a C.I.A. case officer known as "Nine Fingers" after he lost a digit in a motorcycle accident. It was Bassett who told Goss that Foggo was "a very capable man who's done tremendous things for the agency."
hy Goss would take personnel tips from Bassett is anybody's guess. "From time to time Bassett ran aground on judgment issues," recalls Milt Bearden, a former C.I.A. station chief. In 1989, Bassett was reprimanded for inappropriately carrying a gun to a meeting. That same year he sent a prank letter to a C.I.A. agent stationed in Vienna whom he'd heard the K.G.B. was trying to blackmail. "So Bassett wrote the poor guy in Vienna a letter as if he were his lover, describing their supposedly delightful sex acts," reports a source. What Bassett didn't expect was that Cuban intelligence would get hold of his bawdy letter, at which point they tried to blackmail him.
Foggo, too, had problems with his C.I.A. bosses. He was reportedly accused of insubordination by a female superior, who retired shortly after his 2004 promotion. In Frankfurt, where he had been chief of the C.I.A.'s logistics office, a $2-to-$3-million agency contract to supply bottled water to agency personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan was awarded to Archer Logistics, which had no experience in such matters, but which happened to be owned by Foggo's old high-school friend Wilkes. (A lawyer for Foggo claims his client had no idea the firm belonged to Wilkes.) Like Congress, the C.I.A. is used to doling out huge sums, often with little or no oversight. "Look, the agency guys live in a culture where there's tons of money and a lot of it is cash," explains one intelligence source, "where you say, How much cash are we giving that guy, that asset, and what suitcase was it in? The American Tourister?"
In early May, when Foggo arrived for work at Langley, he was told to relinquish his security pass. On the seventh floor of the C.I.A. all sorts of agents—C.I.A., F.B.I., Defense Department, and I.R.S.—were looking for evidence of possible bribery and corruption. When Goss was nudged from office that same month, General Michael V. Hayden, who replaced him, announced that "amateur hour" was over at the C.I.A. "The prosecutors are really focused on Foggo in every one of his postings," a source who has been interviewed by federal prosecutors tells me.
he investigation of Duke Cunningham has touched any number of his associates. Representative Jerry Lewis is reportedly under investigation for dealings with his friend Lowery, as well as for what the Copley News Service has referred to as "steering earmarks [money for pet projects] to certain entities," but he hasn't been contacted by prosecutors "about anything," says his spokesman.
Unlike the federal authorities, Tom Casey has had an uneasy feeling about Lewis for a long time, he says. In the spring of 1993, Casey says, he received an 11 p.m. phone call from Lewis, who had an urgent message: he wanted Casey to hire Lowery as a lobbyist—with remuneration "worth a fortune." After leaving Congress, Lowery had joined a Washington lobbying firm, which became Copeland Lowery & Jacquez, and ties between him and the stately Lewis remain warm to this day. In the last six years Lowery's firm and its clients gave more than $450,000 to Lewis.
"Tom, let's cut to the chase. I want you to get stock options for Bill Lowery" was how Lewis opened their conversation, Casey recalls. Specifically, Casey adds, Lewis suggested that a very large number of Audre stock options issued in Canada be given to Lowery, but put under other names. Lewis's actual words were "I am going to give you a list of names," says Casey, who declined to go along. That was the last time he and Lewis had a pleasant conversation, Casey says. (Through a spokesman, Lewis acknowledges that he "thinks he remembers meeting Tom Casey," but denies the story. "What's described sounds illegal to me," says the spokesperson. Through his lawyer, Lowery also denies any knowledge of the proposed deal.)
In May, Casey discussed his allegations about Lewis (among others) with federal prosecutors—as the unhappy congressman now knows. Lewis is sick to death of the scandal that started with Cunningham. Gone is the fabled cooperative spirit of the defense-appropriations subcommittee. "I have never been as angry toward anyone in my entire career," Lewis recently said of Duke.
Cunningham is now separated from his wife, Nancy, who used to tell friends the Duke-Stir made her "seasick." In court papers, she refers to him as "Mr. Cunningham." In February she sued the government in an effort to retain her share of the proceeds from the sale of the $2.6 million Rancho Santa Fe house.
The main assets of Wade's firm were sold last year and renamed Athena Innovative Solutions, which is led by James C. King, a retired army lieutenant general. Blogger Justin Rood has claimed that King, along with his wife, Jeneane, gave on one day—March 23, 2004—a total of four checks of $2,000 each to Katherine Harris's campaign.
Polls show that in her Senate campaign Harris is badly trailing the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson. In May, Florida governor Jeb Bush announced, "I just don't believe she can win."
In June it was revealed by The New York Times that Lowery's prosperous lobbying firm, which earned $7.4 million last year, was dissolving in the face of the investigations. Two Democrats seceded to form their own firm; three Republicans, including Lowery, will compose another.
Wilkes, I am told by a source who has talked to investigators, is not cooperating. ("He will not plead guilty, because he is not guilty," says Luque. "But he has offered to cooperate.") Incensed and invigorated, prosecutors are poring over his campaign contributions, and the Pentagon's inspector general is scrutinizing his contracts. "Before, they were willing to ignore a lot of things. Now they are concentrating on Wilkes and Foggo," says the source.
Wade's sentencing has been deferred because, federal prosecutors believe, "his cooperation will continue for quite some time." (Wade's lawyer Howard Shapiro refuses to comment on this story.) There were early reports that Cunningham was acting mulish with Pentagon investigators, but his lawyer says, "My client's fate depends on how well he cooperates."
Eight years ago Cunningham was diagnosed with prostate cancer and two months later underwent a radical prostatectomy, but the cancer has recurred. He will live, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital estimate, perhaps seven years. A long jail term "would likely be a death sentence," Cunningham's lawyer informed the court. Currently, he is expected to serve seven years—although his sentence may be further reduced if the government is satisfied with his revelations. He is to be told shortly which federal prison will be his new, and perhaps final, home.