Frothing at the Mouth Over Nothing

Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker thinks he's broken a story about Director of CIA nominee Michael Hayden being involved in the bribery and hooker scandal. If you read carefully, he's saying that Hayden is actually involved in nothing of any consequence:

While director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden contracted the services of a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, according to two former employees of the company.

Sounds pretty devastating, huh? Well read on:

Hayden, President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA, contracted with MZM Inc. for the services of Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of the company, the sources say. MZM was owned and operated by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with $1.4 million in money and gifts. Wade has also reportedly told investigators he helped arrange for prostitutes to entertain the disgraced lawmaker, and he continues to cooperate with a federal inquiry into the matter.

OK, Hayden contracted with a company whose owner is involved in the Cunningham scandal. My company has contracted with Pfizer, am I liable for the Vioxx deaths? It's a stretch, Justin.

King has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities. However, federal records show he contributed to some of Wade's favored lawmakers, including $6000 to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and $4000 to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).

Aha, now we get down to it. King has not been implicated but he gave money to Republicans so he must be shady. I don't recall the outrage when a woman, while working for the CIA, leaked extremely sensitive info to the WaPo and was shown to have contributed to Kerry and other Donks. Why the double standard. Kings former associate just played cards, gave some money to "Duke" and banged hookers. Mary McCarthy violated a serious federal law.

As an MZM employee, King was involved in a number of controversial projects. In 2002, he was a key adviser to the team creating CIFA, the Pentagon's domestic surveillance operation. In 2004, he was one of three MZM staffers who worked on the White House Robb-Silberman Commission, which recommended expanding CIFA's powers.

NSA is home to its own controversial project, of course -- the post-9/11 warrantless domestic wiretapping operation known as the "terrorist surveillance program." There is no indication that King has been involved in that project.

"I don't see anything nefarious" about King's work for Hayden, one employee told me, although he conceded he did not know what projects King worked on. "I think Hayden needed help."

So in other words, Rood has nothing. He worked at a place where Hayden did and Hayden contracted with his company. How about muckraking about all the cases this occurs on the dems side. It's a non-story.