MZM Worked Prewar Iraq Intelligence

[Rose Siding]

from TPMuckraker-

Buried in this new Business Week article by Eamon Javers and Dawn Kopecki is a startling revelation: MZM Inc., the company once owned by admitted felon Mitchell Wade, worked on assessing Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities during the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"(B)efore the invasion of Iraq," the duo writes, "(MZM's business) included helping with (the) controversial analysis of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities."

Wade, of course, has confessed to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) with over a million dollars in money, gifts and favors.

Others, including Warandpiece.com's Laura Rozen, have long suspected Wade's MZM to have played a role in throwing the calls on Saddam's nuclear programs. It's been known for some time that MZM provided contract employees to the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), which handled much of the Pentagon's pre-war WMD analysis. But Javers and Kopecki are the first to report that those MZMers were involved in the center's (mis)interpretation of the pre-war Iraq nuke intel.

The two note that while the White House's WMD Commission directed heavy criticism at the NGIC for "misscharacterizing" Saddam's nuclear program, it didn't fault MZM directly. (Of course, as we reported earlier, MZM had at least three staffers on the commission's staff.)........MORE........

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001103.php

[maddezmom]

1. K&R

Thanks for posting :thumbsup: This should be front page stuff!

[chill_wind]

3. I agree! K&R.

[chill_wind]

2. MZM had "unspecified" contracts at The White House. That's right.

Laura Rozen (War&Peace), Justin Rood (TPM Muckraker) and others have been doing an amazing kind of digging and reporting on this. TPM also cites Knight-Ridder and even a blurb quite a while back by WAPO, while all of it seems to continue to remain about 99.9% under the MSM radar.

Cunningham/MZM seems to be an oozing stain that just keeps on slowly spreading and spreading. An iceberg we might only be seeing the tip of. (lame metaphors, I know, pick your own..)

To get a sense of its various possible tentacles,(maybe it's actually a small octopus) here are just a couple being looked at in various reports by TPM:

Did MZM, Other Companies Staff Bush Intel Panel?
By Justin Rood - March 22, 2006, 9:26 AM

At War and Piece, Laura Rozen finds more indicators that MZM's contracts with the White House were for three professional staffers on the Robb-Silberman WMD commission.

see story:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000155.php

White House Linked to Mitch Wade Iran Group?
By Josh Marshall - March 7, 2006, 11:20 AM




Yesterday at TPM we noted the fact that in April 2004 Mitchell Wade -- the guy who paid off Duke Cunningham for help bagging contracts -- registered as the 'registered agent' for an outfit called the "Iranian Democratization Foundation."

(snip)

Now, during 2004, the Federal Procurement Data System lists 444 procurement contracts for the Executive Office of the President (that's the official name for what we colloquially refer to as 'the White House'). Most of those contracts are what you'd expect for a large office complex -- computer services, shipping, office supplies, etc.

But three stand out: three contracts, for a total of $254,437, for unspecified "intelligence services."

Those three contracts were awarded to Mitchell Wade's MZM, http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000045.php


Search Results:
March 22, 2006, 09:34 AM EDT
More signs that those mysterious White House MZM contracts were tied to the president's private Iraq intel commission....

March 17, 2006, 10:40 PM EDT
The story continues to unfold. Jonathan Landay tonight in Knight-Ridder: "A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on...

search and read more at TPM on MZM
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=MZM+white+house+contract&search.x=0&search.y=0

(bold emphasis mine)

[Rose Siding]

4. Laura Rozen: The wmd docs the House gopers flashed are connected

It's a complex tie-in. Laura's got hot links at the url I'm posting

There's another angle to this. Guess what is the source of the documents recently promoted by Congressmen Hoekstra, Weldon and Senator Santorum, on the 500 buried, 20 year old chemical munitions in Iraq? The Army National Ground Intelligence Center (the NGIC), where Mitchell Wade's MZM got its start, by, as Walter Pincus has reported, hiring relatives of top NGIC officials, and then the NGIC officials themselves.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004535.html

[chill_wind]

5. Ties to "unspecified intelligence contracts" for the WH, ties to Iraq

pre_War intel? ties to the Silberman-Robb Whitwash Commision? ties to Iran front group? ties to helping Pentagon/CIFA spy on anti-war protesters?......

(Rolling Stone - ROBERT DREYFUSS Apr 18, 2006 )

The Pentagon's New Spies

The military has built a vast domestic-intelligence network to fight terrorism -- but it's using it to track students, grandmothers and others protesting the war

(...)

The agency got another boost last year when a commission appointed by Bush urged that CIFA be empowered to collect and analyze intelligence "both inside and outside the United States." Three of the commission's consultants, it turns out, were employees of MZM -- one of CIFA's primary contractors -- and federal prosecutors are now looking into whether Pentagon personnel have committed crimes in steering CIFA contracts to MZM. Nevertheless, the president agreed last October to significantly broaden the agency's mission, giving it the authority to actually direct military intelligence operations. From a small unit designed as a clearinghouse for reports, CIFA was transformed overnight into a major arm of domestic intelligence. Both its budget and its staff, thought to be in excess of 1,000 people, are classified.

more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9962459/the_pentagons_new_spies?source=politics_rssfeed

ties to Hayden at NSA......

Two Degrees of Separation from the "Duke"

Hayden, while serving as the director of the National Security Agency, "contracted the services" of retired Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of MZM Inc., the "company at the center" of the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal, "according to two former employees of the company," Justin Rood reported for TPM Muckraker.
May 8, 2006, (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000581.php)

(snip)
"Before joining MZM in December 2001, King served under Hayden as the NSA's associate deputy director for operations, and as head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency," Rood wrote.

In 2004 and 2005, while working at NSA Headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, King was "doing special projects for Hayden as an MZM employee," Rood reported. The exact details of these activities are unknown, although Rood learned that one former employee "said he thought was doing 'special projects' for the director," while another "speculated it was 'high-ranking advisory work.'"

more: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_V._Hayden&redirect=no

and now per your latest link, ties to the NGIC/ FIRES computer intel and Santorum's infamous WMD's?....

tiebacks again to the pre-War intel and Hayden at NSA was going to investigate it? Oh it is all too beautiful!! No hard work or exceptional service or sacrifice for The Decider too great!

Intelligence Center, Contractor MZM on Cozy Terms

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 17, 2005; Page A07

(...)

The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq's weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.

The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for "gross failure" in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was "completely wrong" when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket motor cases.

That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters June 29 that his office would conduct its own inquiry into the Silberman-Robb finding.

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071601018.html