Capitol Offense: Randy 'Duke' Cunningham

Map It  Van Ness 

THE DAILY GRILL on Wisconsin Avenue is inconspicuous. But thanks to former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, this particular Georgetown chain restaurant is now a historic landmark. The upscale establishment is where, over lunch, Cunningham scrawled his infamous "bribe menu" — on official congressional stationary — for the benefit of defense contractor Mitch Wade.

As a member of the House Appropriations and Intelligence Committees, Cunningham was able to funnel a stream of lucrative pork barrel earmarks to his supporters. The Vietnam War hero got a lot in return for using his seat in Congress to foist his pals' projects upon the U.S. military, so much stuff, in fact — including yachts, antiques and a mansion — that he aroused the suspicion of longtime Washington, D.C., reporter Marcus Stern, who did a lifestyle audit on Cunningham.

Like Watergate, the investigation that brought down Cunningham shows what can happen when a reporter follows the money — and when a public figure maintains a record of his venality.

After kick-starting the process that landed Cunningham in prison in 2006, Stern has returned with "The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, the Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught" (PublicAffairs), an engrossing depiction of the political system that allowed ol' Duke to fleece America. (Want to know more about what "earmarks" are and why they're problematic? Click here — or read Stern's book.)

Stern's "The Wrong Stuff" co-authors are Jerry Kammer, Dean Calbreath and George Condon, Jr. — men with whom he shares honors such as the George Polk Award, Edgar A. Poe Award and the Pulitzer Prize for their work on the Cunningham story.

Express caught up with Kammer and Stern on the Southwest waterfront, not far from where the bribe menu (along with a fairly large collection of K-Y Jelly) was discovered on Cunningham's yacht.

Stern, Kammer and Condon will further discuss "The Wrong Stuff" on Tuesday at Politics & Prose.

» EXPRESS: I didn't know before I read this book that Congress authorizes money that goes to the Pentagon for things that the Pentagon not only doesn't ask for but has no use for. And that once that money is appropriated, the Pentagon can't spend it on things it actually needs.
» STERN: That's right. As his world was crumbling around him, Cunningham argued, "I may have accepted these gifts — and that was wrong — but I never voted for a program that I didn't believe was absolutely vital for national security." But what [was] he doing was getting $6.3 million for Mitch Wade and Brent Wilkes in exchange for a $700,000 storage device that was going to gather dust in the closet? There's no way he can credibly insist that he pursued that earmark — on the appropriations side or on the procurement side — because he thought it was good for national security. He knew exactly what it was good for. That particular earmark paid off half the mortgage on his Santa Fe house days after the money went to Brent Wilkes.

» EXPRESS: The subtitle of your book, "The Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught," implies that there are other, more corrupt, congressmen who haven't been caught.
» STERN: First of all, Bob Ney had his boat over here. Duke Cunningham's was over there. Down there somewhere is where James Traficant had his boat. All three of 'em went straight from Congress to prison. There are other important members of Congress and lobbyists who live in this marina and they're all doing business together. There are an awful lot of people who are making a lot of money — legally and illegally — through corruption. The subtitle is a suggestion of our cynicism. This is not just one bad apple.
» KAMMER: People want to dismiss Cunningham, because he was so outrageously corrupt. I think Cunningham is unique in the degree but not in the kind of corruption. There's a lot of trading of decisions for money in various forms. ... There's a lot of legal bribery going on. He obliterated the line between the legal and the illegal.
» STERN: If Congress doesn't get serious about reforming itself, it's inevitable that another congressman will step forward and claim the title. He will no longer be the most corrupt congressman in record unless something is done, about earmarks particularly.

» EXPRESS: How can we stop this sort of thing? Would getting rid of earmarks be enough?
» KAMMER: I think that it's a pernicious relationship with fundraisers. Why do congressmen make suspect relationships with lobbyists? Because that's where the money is. Money is the mother's milk of politics. They all need money, and not only to run their own campaigns: Even if they're from a safe district and don't face a credible challenge, they're expected to raise money for the party, so the party can distribute the money to its vulnerable candidates. Jerry Lewis, as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, was controlling about a $400 billion budget. Now it's $500 billion. That's close to $50 million every hour of every day of the year. Where you have big pools of money, you have people of impure motives drawn to it. ... We have to get the money out of the system, because if we don't pay for the elections up front, we pay for them many times over in bad government.

» EXPRESS: What other reforms would be helpful?
» KAMMER: Staffers view their positions on the Hill as finishing school for a job on K Street. While they're ostensibly public servants on the Hill, many times, apparently, they are preparing themselves to make the jump and are making decisions that are beneficial to their future employers. We saw a lot of that. Twenty years ago, how many retired congressmen were lobbyists? Now it's approaching a half of those who retire who become lobbyists. And the number of staffers who do that — it's embarrassing for a system that thinks of itself as a well-functioning representative democracy. It's representing K Street.
» STERN: We figured that Cunningham had about $50 million every year that he could earmark: It was his money. He could give it to his contractors, his supporters, his friends and nobody had any oversight over that, except maybe an appropriations staffer here or there and the procurement people at mid-levels at the Pentagon.
» KAMMER: And if that staffer, who is the gatekeeper supposedly representing the public interest is, as we saw, soon to be a lobbyist, working with the lobbyist who is about to benefit from that earmark — what is the check on that staffer? We talked with one disillusioned former staffer on the Appropriations Committee who left in disgust at the number of his colleagues who were looking for their job on K Street.
» STERN: That career track is very much a part of Washington's culture. It needs to be looked at. It needs to be fixed.
» KAMMER: For people who have no shame, it's a very attractive system. ... The system is shot-through with opportunities for self-dealing.
» STERN: Jerry's reporting showed how clear the exchange of money is. He showed what an earmark is. It's the corrupt system of the day. We can break it up, but something else will come up in its place. The problem is: These guys write their own laws. They write laws about how they're supposed to behave and they can write laws as funny-looking as their congressional districts so that they can wiggle through. There's an enormous amount of honest graft.

I'm skeptical that Congress is going to do anything to change the flow of money in any meaningful way, despite the fact that the Democrats came in with a mandate. They were elected to run the House in part because of Iraq, but also because of the corruption scandals that were constantly swirling around the Republicans. I don't think they're going to do much more than talk and posture and the bare minimum reforms that they need to do to appease. People like Jack Murtha are part of this system. All the incumbent Democrats are part of this system.

» EXPRESS: Your book notes that Cunningham was considered an intellectual lightweight in the House. Do you think that part of the reason that he got caught — that he was the only one stupid enough to make a bribe menu?
» STERN: That was his problem: He wasn't very smart and he was arrogant. The bribe menu is a perfect example. He sat there and wrote that out and then took it home with him and left it on his boat — even when he knows, as he would have after June 12, 2005, that people were looking for evidence. That's dumb.
» KAMMER: Clearly he's not bright. But everything was working for him beautifully, until, all of a sudden, it wasn't.
» STERN: It was inevitable. It was going to happen, because they were getting so grandiose and they were getting so sloppy. When he came to Washington, Cunningham already had a flawed character and a sense of entitlement and he came here and he mixed with the perfect culture for that — the culture of Washington where he's a member of Congress and they're like demigods. They're dealt all the goodies to hand out.

» EXPRESS: Do you think Cunningham will read this book?
» STERN: I don't think he reads books. I'm not even sure he read his own book — I think he had a ghostwriter. I think he's going to write another book, looking to make a buck. He's quite an entrepreneur.

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Tue., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos

» Click here to download an interview with Duke Cunningham.

Photos: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images; Michael Temchine; courtesy PublicAffairs