It looks like the number three guy in CIA may be in big trouble because of allegations about a sweetheart water deal in Iraq. The guy in the crosshairs, Kyle Dustin (Dusty) Foggo, is currently the Executive Director of the CIA. Dusty, as he is known in the building, has a direct tie to the corrupt Californian Congressman, Randy "Duke" Cunningham. According to friends still working on the inside, tongues are wagging about the peril that may be on the horizon for Dusty. Specifically, Dusty is alleged to have played a role in helping Brent Wilkes, a co-conspirator with Duke Cunningham, get the contract to supply bottled water to the CIA in Iraq. A buddy of mine who was on the ground in Iraq back in 2003 says that rumors were swirling then that Dusty was a player in the water deal. Dusty, who reportedly got the job as Executive Director thanks to "helpful" suggestions from Duke Cunningham to his congressional buddy,CIA Director Porter Goss, is now under the microscope.

Details about this connection were first published last month in the National Journal by Jason Vest and Laura Rozen (Cunningham Inquiries Not Finished, NATIONAL JOURNAL, Dec. 12 2005, sub. required). According to Vest and Rozen, who writes the War & Piece blog:

One of Cunningham's suspected co-conspirators is defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Wilkes was never formally named in the Cunningham plea bargain, but Wilkes's attorney, Michael Lipman, has confirmed reporting by The San Diego Union-Tribune that Wilkes is "co-conspirator #1" named in Cunningham's plea. With Cunningham's help, Wilkes's company, ADCS Inc., netted Wilkes a fortune running document copying and storage systems for the Pentagon. Wilkes is a close friend, former high school football teammate, and college roommate of Kyle Dustin (Dusty) Foggo. (Indeed, the two are so close, they have named their sons after each other, according to The Union-Tribune.) Foggo is CIA executive director, the third-ranking official at the spy agency. . . .

After graduating from San Diego State University in 1977, Foggo worked for three years as a police officer in San Diego; while studying for a master's degree at the University of Southern California, he worked as an investigator for the Los Angeles district attorney's office.

He entered the CIA in 1982 as a presidential management intern and became an officer in the Management General Service, a specialized secret element of the agency's Directorate of Administration. In the field, MG officers had unique powers that included handling a station's contracting and the authority to unilaterally sole-source contracts well into hundreds of thousands of dollars. At CIA headquarters, MG officers were often deployed to other directorates in senior administrative positions, in some cases with contract authority.

According to current and former CIA officers who have worked closely with Foggo, before becoming executive director his postings included a stint at CIA headquarters in the late 1990s as chief of the Directorate of Science and Technology's Administrative Resource Center, which handles some contracting. From 2001 to 2004, as chief of the agency's regional support base in Frankfurt (which covers the Middle East, Africa, and Europe), Foggo was in a similar position to direct contracting activity. And according to two intelligence sources who spoke with National Journal, one of Wilkes's corporations received at least one CIA contract -- to supply water to CIA personnel in Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003.

At dinner last night, a knowledgeable friend told me that CIA Headquarters is buzzing about the Dusty "water" affair, with genuine concern that he may be forced to resign because of the perceived, if not real, impropriety. And I thought the matter had fizzled. Not so I'm told. It is still alive within the bowels of CIA.