Virgil Wades Into Hot Water

According to the Roanoke Times, Common Cause has asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate the shady dealings between Virgil Goode and Mitchell Wade. This is great for two reasons: 1) Someone outside of the district is focusing on Virgil, and 2) Someone inside the district is reporting on his corrupt dealings with the military-industrial complex.

Goode has received more than $90,000 from Wade, other MZM employees and their family members, and the company's political action committee. Critics say the money influenced Goode to request federal funding that eventually went to an MZM operation in Martinsville.

After seeking a $3.6 million appropriation for the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center, which conducts background checks on out-of-the-country military vendors at the Martinsville location, Goode was involved in negotiating a state economic incentives package that offered unusual benefits to MZM.
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Last month, The Roanoke Times made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records of any audit, inspection or investigation of the facility conducted by the inspector general's office of the Department of Defense.

In a response this week, the Defense Department denied the request because the information sought is part of an open investigation.

Those last two paragraphs are most interesting to me. Something tells me there is a lot more coming on this story. Not only does it mean the Roanoke Times is paying attention, it means they're actively researching Virgil, as well as the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center in Martinsville -- whose second in command, Joe James, recently stepped down for "personal reasons" just before we learned that his wife worked in the Pentagon office that oversaw the contract to establish the FSAC.

The article sort of skims over what seems to me to be quite a revelation: that the Pentagon is already investigating the center in Martinsville. That could be big. Of course, all the investigations in the world don't mean as much as an indictment, but it's a start. Likewise, this Roanoke Times article isn't a flurry of aggressive journalism throughout the district, but it's a start.