Guess Who's Watching The Hen House?

During the election, we talked a bit about how the CIA and other spy agencies worked hard to insert their own operatives into Congress as members, with the object of getting control over oversight of their own agencies. There were some successes (William Hurd in Texas) and some failures (Kevin Strouse and Bobby McKenzie) but electing Members of Congress isn't the only way the National Security State can keep control of their shit. This week, investigative journalist Lee Fang, writing for Republic Report, exposed another: high-paid lobbyists being hired by Intelligence shills to run the oversight committees. How about... Blackwater in charge?

After lobbyist-run SuperPACs and big money efforts dominated the last election, legislators are now appointing lobbyists to literally manage the day-to-day affairs of Congress. For the House Intelligence Committee, which oversees government intelligence operations and agencies, the changing of the guard means a lobbyist for Academi, the defense contractor formerly known as Blackwater, is now in charge.

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA), the incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee when the House reconvenes in January, announced that Jeff Shockey will be the new Staff Director of the committee. As a paid representative of Academi, Shockey and his firm have earned $80,000 this year peddling influence on behalf of Academi.

In previous years, the House Intelligence Committee has investigated Blackwater over secret contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. As Staff Director, the highest position on a committee for a staff member, Shockey will oversee the agencies that do business with his former employer.

Shockey also represents a number of other companies with business before defense agencies: General Dynamics, Koch Industries, Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance, Innovative Defense Technologies and Boeing.

The role reversal, for lobbyists to take brief stints in Congress after an election, has become a normalized. In a previous investigation for The Nation, we found that some corporate firms offer employment contracts with special bonuses for their staff to return to government jobs, ensuring the paycut they receive for passing through the revolving door to become public servants doesn’t have to alter their K Street lifestyle.

Other committees are also hiring lobbyists. Congessman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) replacement as chair of the Oversight Committee, just hired Podesta Group lobbyist Sean McLaughlin as his new Staff Director. McLaughlin’s client list includes the Business Roundtable, a trade association for corporate CEOs of large firms. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) also hired a new chief of staff, Mark Isakowitz, who represents BP.

Essential reading: the comment below on Shockley's background as a longtime crooked Beltway insider going back to when Jerry Lewis was the most corrupt man in Washington and Shockley was one of his top bagmen.

NBC AIRS A SMOKING GUN IN JERRY LEWIS BRIBERY CASE

Although 37,027 utterly brain dead Republicans in California's High Desert voted for him in the GOP primary (where he was, as usual, unchallenged), prison looms large in the immediate future of House Appropriations Committee Jerry Lewis. Today NBC News reported the details of how Lewis shook down his victims and how he used his official position to enrich himself and his cronies (and his family).

The CEO of a defunct software company, Audre, Inc., has been explaining to federa investigators how Lewis allowed him to actually write his own earmarks for $14 million in Pentagon contracts in return fo bribes and kickbacks. Lewis wanted stock in the company sent to his bagman, Bill Lowery, using a Canadian front. A trascript:

Tom Casey: I just thought, in my opinion, it pressed the boundaries of what was ethical.
Lisa Myers: You were allowed to write language for an appropriations bill yourself?
Casey: Yes, I did. That was Congressman Lewis' suggestion.
Casey: Congressman Lewis asked me to set up stock options for Bill Lowery in our company.
Myers: Did you view it [Lowery and the Canadian blind] as an effort to hide what was really going on?
Casey: It was intended to conceal his participation, yes.

Like his pal and fellow bribe-taker, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, used to do when he was first caught, Lewis is still denying "everything" and playing the aggrieved victim (a Republican specialty). "I am astonished," he say, "that a top news organization would broadcast such unsubstantiated accusations."


SATURDAY UPDATE: PLEASE JUST PUT HIM IN PRISON ALREADY SO WE CAN MOVE ON

Look, I don't want to write about this bucket of living slime everyday. It makes me want to jump in the shower every time I have to read about him, let alone write about him. Even at the beginning of my Duke Cunningham coverage, I knew that once the manhole on the Lewis cesspool was blown open, it would cover the whole system with the worst detritus of human corruption ever witnessed.

Today's L.A. TIMES is reporting on one of Lewis' top aides, Jeffrey Shockley, taking a hefty $2 million dollar kickback from Lewis' bagman Bill Lowery. If nothing else it reinforces the lengths Lewis went to cover his tracks as he did everything possible to drain the system of every last dime his grasping paws could get a hold of.

Lewis' daily denials about knowing anything about an investigation or any wrong-doing will probably soon turn into denials that he has been cuffed and frog-walked and fingerprinted yet. But the inevitability of Jerry Lewis spending at least a decade in a federal prison-- unless Bush pardons all the principals in the Republican Culture of Corruption as he rides off into the sunset-- becomes clearer and clearer by the day.

Lowery's firm seems to have existed for exactly two reasons: "helping clients get federal spending directives known as earmarks approved by Lewis' committee" and funneling kickbacks to Lewis in return for those earmarks.


SUNDAY UPDATE: LEWIS SCANDAL STARTING TO GET TRACTION WHERE IT COUNTS-- AT HOME

Like I've said before, as much as the L.A. TIMES and NY TIMES and WASHINGTON POST and SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE (not to mention a gaggle of bloggers want to expose Jerry Lewis' outrageous criminal activities in Washington, none of it matters as long as his constituents go on their somnolent ways believing he has nothing in mind but "bringing home the bacon" (for them). And this is exactly what they think. The facade of Lewis invincibility is beginning to crack though. Today's ONTARIO DAILY BULLETIN has a thorough and damning story by George Watson that connects the dots for whomever in CA-41 is willing to open their eyes.
(Hat tip to RJB at WORDS HAVE POWER)