Record prison term for ex-congressman

SAN DIEGO — Former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced Friday to eight years and four months in federal prison for taking bribes and evading taxes, considered the harshest penalty delivered to a former member in a congressional corruption case.

"What you did was aggravated in scope, duration and nature," U.S. District Court Judge Larry Alan Burns told Cunningham. "The word 'avarice' is an antiquated word. But I think it applies here."

Burns imposed the sentence after prosecutors argued for the maximum 10 years and defense attorneys suggested six years was enough because Cunningham, 64, has a variety of ailments, including depression.

Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned from Congress after pleading guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy to commit bribery in November.

He had admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors and evading more than $1 million in taxes. The bribes came in exchange for Cunningham using his influence to arrange lucrative contracts for high-tech equipment for intelligence gathering and analysis.

Much thinner than when he pleaded guilty — he said he has gone from 265 pounds to 175 pounds since June — Cunningham choked up as he addressed the judge. "No man has ever been more sorry," he said. "I made a very wrong turn. I rationalized decisions I knew were wrong."

Burns said the amount of money Cunningham took "emasculates" previous bribery crimes. The judge said he understood wanting "the good things in life," but added: "You weren't wet. You weren't cold. You weren't hungry, and yet you did these things."

In addition, Burns ordered that Cunningham pay $1.8 million in back taxes and penalties, $1.85 million in restitution based on the bribes he received, plus hundreds of thousands from the sale of his California mansion. Burns also rejected his request to remain free long enough to say goodbye to his 91-year-old mother and his estranged wife.

Under a plea agreement reached in November, prosecutors agreed not to seek more than a 10-year sentence. They could have pressed for 20 years.

Federal prisoners are generally eligible for parole after serving 85 percent of their sentences, or seven years and one month for Cunningham.

The judge ordered Cunningham into custody immediately and recommended he be sent to the minimum-security prison in Taft, about 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield. The federal Bureau of Prisons will decide where Cunningham will serve his time.

The sentence is the longest handed down to a federal legislator for crimes committed while in office, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Historians said the bribes were the largest involving a U.S. lawmaker.

In a related development, the CIA's inspector general is looking into whether Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the agency's executive director and its third-ranking official, arranged for contracts to be given to companies associated with Brent Wilkes, one of the contractors identified as having made payments to Cunningham. Foggo, a senior intelligence officer handling complex clandestine contracts, is a longtime friend of Wilkes. The investigation was first reported by Newsweek.

"It is standard practice ... to look into assertions that mention agency officers. That should in no way be seen as lending credibility to any allegation," the CIA said.

In a bid for a lesser sentence, Cunningham told the judge about his Vietnam War record. He shot down five enemy planes, three in one day, and received the Navy Cross, the Navy's second-highest medal for bravery.

"I didn't jump into a pack of MiGs for ego," he said in a trembling voice, looking at prosecutors. "I did it because it was the right thing to do."

Prosecutors had urged Burns to ignore Cunningham's war record, saying his heroism was "three decades ago."

But Burns noted that Cunningham had volunteered and served with distinction in combat and later as a flight instructor at the "top-gun" school in San Diego.

The plea agreement, which forced Cunningham to resign, provided a detailed list of payoffs, including cash, sweetheart real-estate deals, antiques, trips, use of a yacht, a deal on a Rolls-Royce and jewelry for his wife.

Prosecutors portrayed Cunningham as the mastermind of the bribery scheme, noting that he kept a "bribe menu" on congressional stationery indicating how much he demanded in exchange for contracts. The menu, for example, indicated he would trade $1 million of federal funding for a $50,000 bribe and offer a discount of $25,000 per million once he had collected $200,000.

Prosecutors also charged that he "bullied and hectored" Pentagon bureaucrats to approve deals for contractors Mitchell Wade and Wilkes, including threatening to get one bureaucrat fired and ignoring a warning from one official that $700,000 in bills from Wilkes' company seemed fraudulent.

Wade pleaded guilty Feb. 24 in Washington to four criminal charges related to the case. Wilkes has not been charged, though prosecutors said the investigation is continuing.

Two other co-conspirators were included in Cunningham's plea agreement but no charges have been announced.

One of series of scandals

The sentence reverberated in Washington, D.C.

"It is my hope that Congressman Cunningham will spend his incarceration thinking long and hard about how he broke the trust of the voters that elected him and those on Capitol Hill who served with him," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement.

The Cunningham scandal is one of a series of GOP scandals: Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty pleas in a corruption investigation; a campaign-finance indictment that forced Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas to step down as majority leader; a stock sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that is under investigation; and the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff in the CIA leak case.

The scale of Cunningham's wrongdoing surpasses anything in the history of Congress, according to official Senate and House historians. "In the sheer dollar amount, it's unprecedented," Deputy House Historian Fred Beuttler said Friday.

The longest term meted out to congressmen in the past four decades had been eight years, handed to former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, in 2002 for taking payoffs, and to former Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y., in 1988 for extorting nearly $2 million from a defense contractor.

Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution, said Friday that "we haven't seen anything like" the magnitude and duration of Cunningham's corruption since the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s.

Cunningham, who represented a Republican district in the affluent suburbs of Northern San Diego County, was elected to Congress in 1990, a few years after retiring from the Navy.

When the Republicans took over the House in 1995, he used his committee seats to earmark funds for Wade and Wilkes. Wilkes' company, ADCS, collected at least $80 million in federal contracts, and Wade's company, MZM, was awarded more than $150 million in the past three years.

Newspaper's disclosures

Cunningham's downfall began in June, when The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Wade had bought the lawmaker's home near San Diego for $1.675 million and sold it months later at a $700,000 loss. Cunningham used the profits — after Wade sent him a $115,100 check to pay the capital-gains tax — to buy a $2.55 million mansion in nearby Rancho Santa Fe. That was followed by a disclosure that Cunningham was living rent-free while in Washington on Wade's yacht, the Duke-Stir.

At first, prosecutors said, Cunningham attempted to cover up his crimes by writing a phony undated letter to Wade offering to pay his loss on the home sale to "eliminate any negative perception."

To explain away rugs and antiques Wade had bought for him, Cunningham said that his check to the rug dealer had been lost in the mail and that he "reminded" the antiques dealer he had given Wade cash for the purchases, prosecutors wrote.

The dealer recalled no such transaction. The rugs and antiques will be auctioned off this month to help pay what Cunningham owes the government. The Rancho Santa Fe home has been sold for $2.6 million and Cunningham's share of the profits seized by the government.

Cunningham will get a congressional pension. Peter Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, estimated that Cunningham's 15 years in the House will make him eligible for about $36,000 a year. With his 21 years of Navy duty added to that total, his annual pension would be about $64,400, Sepp said.

Material from The Washington Post and The Associated Press is included in this report.