Every day, I get a few people visiting my site after Googling for “MZM NGIC.” I find it interesting that a few dozen separate individuals are apparently curious about connections between the fallen military contractor and Charlottesville’s National Ground Intelligence Center.
NGIC has been pointed to as the source of bad Iraq intelligence, perhaps the first time that NGIC has been in the news, at least that I’ve ever noticed. MZM, of course, has recently become known for making illegal payoffs to Rep. Duke Cunningham, and its employees say that they were forced to make contributions to Reps. Virgil Goode and Katherine Harris. That bit about Goode is interesting, because NGIC is in his district, Virginia’s 5th. Given that MZM has done business with NGIC and given a tremendous amount of money to Goode, it seems almost inevitable that something interesting might pop up.
And something interesting has popped up. In Saturday’s Washington Post, Walter Pincus wrote that MZM began to do business with NGIC in 2002, and scarcely a year later, NGIC’s executive director, William S. Rich Jr., took the job as senior executive vice president for strategic intelligence for MZM. There’s nothing inherently inappropriate about that, but like a lot of the rest of this MZM scandal, it could indicate some actual impropriety that lies just under the surface.
Somebody sent me an anonymous tip yesterday morning. I have no idea if there’s any truth to it and, again, it’s not inherently inappropriate, but yet another indicator of trouble beneath the surface:
It is interesting that Mr Rich’s son, Scott went to work for MZM 2 months after the first FIRES award and he commutes to cville from Williamsburg… quite a distance… making big $$$… and now they are one of the largest contractors serving NGIC…
I was also e-mailed a copy of Scott Rich’s resume, which is revealing.
Scott was the “Chief Engineer for FIRES Research and Development efforts” and “managed the FIRES Processing Laboratory” FIRES (“Facilities, Infrastructure and Engineering Systems”) was the first-ever contract between NGIC and MZM. Scott’s father awarded MZM the FIRES contract, and MZM immediately plucked Scott out of working as a network engineer for Cox in Virginia Beach and named him the chief engineer of this purely technical project. Inappropriate? Probably. Illegal? Not that I know of. But some probing might yield a great deal more just under the surface.
“…scarcely a year later, NGIC’s executive director, William S. Rich Jr., took the job as senior executive vice president for strategic intelligence for MZM. There’s nothing inherently inappropriate about that, but like a lot of the rest of this MZM scandal, it could indicate some actual impropriety that lies just under the surface.”
Well, yes there is something inherently improper about it. 18 USC § 207 (c) places a one-year prohibition on former senior employees on communicating with their former department or agency. The legal language goes something like this: “For 1 year after serving in such a position, former senior employees are prohibited by virture of § 207 (c) from knowingly making, with intent to influence, any communication to, or appearance before, an employee of the department, agency or designated component in which they served during their last year of Government service, if that communication or appearance is made on behalf of any other person seeking official action on a matter.”
This 1-year “cooling off” period is to allow for a period of adjustment to new roles for former senior employee and the agency he served and to diminish any appearances that Government decisions might be affected by the improper use by an individual of his former senior position.
In his Post article from last Saturday, Walter Pincus wrote that “In September 2003, Rich retired from the NGIC and thereafter went to work as senior executive vice president for strategic intelligence for MZM, according to former NGIC colleagues and Pentagon documents.” How soon thereafter? The Post article seems to indicate pretty much immediately, which would have been a violation of the 1 year cooling off period mandated by law. Moreover, his MZM position as “senior executive vice president for strategic intelligence” was surely as a result of his former NGIC position and no doubt would have brought him back into contact with his former agency during that same period. Surely Mr. Rich, as a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service would have been aware of this particular legal prohibition?
It all certainly gives the appearance of both impropriety and illegality to me, but being from a bygone era myself, perhaps I just can’t see the finer nuances of how all this could be even remotely proper.