Outgoing CIA official's home, office searched

WASHINGTON — Federal agents Friday searched the CIA offices and Virginia home of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the spy agency's No. 3 official who was forced to resign this week amid a widening criminal investigation into allegations of government corruption and bribery.

Earlier this year, Foggo was placed under investigation by the CIA inspector general and federal prosecutors after allegations that he helped a high-school friend, Brent Wilkes, obtain CIA contracts and improperly accepted vacation trips from Wilkes.

Wilkes, a San Diego defense contractor, has been under investigation for allegedly bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who pleaded guilty to corruption charges in November and is serving a prison sentence. Wilkes has not been charged, but he was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cunningham investigation.

Foggo and Wilkes have been friends since high school in San Diego and attended poker parties in Washington, sometimes with members of Congress and other CIA officers, participants have said.

Foggo has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged. His attorney, William Hundley, did not return calls Friday. Foggo was in his office late Thursday, officials said, but by Friday morning he was barred from the CIA campus.

In a staff-wide e-mail Monday, Foggo said he intended to step down but did not mention the investigation. He emphasized that he had no plans for an immediate departure.

Foggo spent 25 years in the CIA in several posts at headquarters and overseas, including Honduras; Vienna, Austria; and Frankfurt, Germany.

Federal investigators are trying to determine whether Foggo steered contracts to Wilkes while he served in Frankfurt in the years before being named the agency's executive director, sources have said.

More than 30 agents from the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the CIA inspector general's office took part in the raids on Foggo's seventh-floor suite at CIA headquarters and at his rented home in Vienna, Va., said Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington Field Office.

Foggo, 51, was hired in 2004 by Porter Goss, the former Republican congressman who was pushed out last week as CIA director.

During his tenure, Foggo tightened the agency's publication rules and launched several investigation of leaks to the media.