It’s easy to see the Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) saga as some sort of congressional comic opera. After all, here we have a former Navy ace-turned-back-bench congressman. We find out he’s livin’ large free of charge (or nearly so) courtesy of a fast-rising defense contractor who’s helped Duke buy a fancy new house with a thinly disguised cash payment of three-quarters of a million dollars.

Then it turns out that when it comes to cash-n-carry congressional work the Duke must go by that maxim that if you would sin, sin greatly. Because the contractor, Mitchell Wade, has also arranged for Duke to live on a fancy 40-foot yacht docked down on the Potomac when he’s spending time in D.C. representing the rest of his constituents besides Mitchell Wade.

But there’s a more serious part of this story — one that’s only now starting to get its deserved attention. That is, what exactly were Wade and MZM Inc. buying with all that largesse to Cunningham and other members of Congress — such as Virgil Goode (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) — who received hefty helpings of campaign dough?

Remember, MZM isn’t getting contracts for government-issue pencils or running concession stands at federal parks. MZM is involved in some of the most sensitive and critical work our government is now doing to protect citizens and soldiers alike.

According to an article that appeared yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune, one of the three main services MZM is providing to the U.S. government is something called “counterintelligence field activity.” The Union-Tribune describes it as “a highly secretive program created in 2002 by a Pentagon directive that focuses on gathering intelligence to avert attacks like the ones on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Other services include providing translators for troops stationed in Iraq, undisclosed services at CentCom Headquarters in Florida, as well as battlefield intelligence at U.S. Army intelligence installations at Fort Belvoir and Charlottesville, Va.

These are, to put it mildly, pretty important jobs — ones that, it is no exaggeration to say, many of our lives may well depend on.

And that should prompt us to ask the question: If Mitchell Wade and Co. had to lavish so much money on Duke Cunningham to get sufficient help to land all these contracts, were MZM’s services really the best on offer?

And if they were, why was MZM having such a tough time landing contracts — as reported in the Union-Tribune and the North-County Times — before the company’s CEO got so intimately involved in upgrading Cunningham’s accommodations in D.C. and back in the district?

On its website, MZM says it’s involved in providing “force protection” and dealing with improvised explosive devices, the homemade roadside bombs that are killing and maiming so many American soldiers and Marines in Iraq.

So we must also ask: Are there American servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq making do with second- or third-best because of Cunningham’s new house and fancy waterborne digs in D.C.?

No doubt that’s a question Democrats will be happy to ask, as well they should. But the question goes beyond partisan politics and whether Duke Cunningham is yet another bought-and-paid-for member of Congress.

Over the past three and a half years, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars toughening our homeland defenses and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the nature of things many of the particulars of just what’s being paid for and who’s being paid are shielded from full public view. That’s understandable and necessary.

But it also opens up a vast opportunity for abuse. And the only body really capable of reining in such abuses is Congress itself.

Take a look at MZM’s meteoric rise over the past three years and you see that its business model seems mainly focused on lathering up a few key members of Congress. Is it really true that individual members of Congress, while pocketing loads of dollars from defense contractors, are playing such a pivotal role in choosing which companies get key contracts? And is that the best way to win the war on terrorism? Are things really going so well in Iraq that we can afford to organize our troop supplies by the law of the campaign contribution?

From the Civil War to the Second World War, the United States has never fought a major military conflict in which war profiteering did not play some role. It would be surprising if the same weren’t true today — particularly with the major push to outsource so many tasks once done by the military itself. And that’s the real story behind the Cunningham debacle: corruption in military contracting and a Congress that is unwilling to police itself.

Whoever makes that their issue, Republican or Democrat, will do the nation a very big favor.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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