• Ken Lay predicted his own death! Just like Biggie Smalls and Martin Luther King! [Consumerist]

• Unless he didn’t, and is in Fiji right now. One of the two. [Dealing In Subterfuges]
• The name of the Dong. [Andrew Sullivan]
• We must reduce our dependence on foreign sources of kimchi! [Rude Cactus]
• Harold Ford of Tennessee - corruption so deep even Reuters can’t find it. [Sweetness & Light]
• James Wolcott is all about red meat and illegal fur - but draws the line at Honduran hookers. [James Wolcott]
• The lower you go in the Hookergate investigation the shadier the characters get. [TPM Muckraker]

Oh dear, things are looking especially embarrassing for former CIA honcho Dusty Foggo, because Vanity Fair’s big Duke Cunningham article hits the stands in New York and Los Angeles today , and a preliminary scan for naughty bits reveals the following delicious paragraph:

[Defense contracter Brent] Wilkes also introduced [contractor Tom] Casey to Dusty Foggo, who often passed through Washington. Around 1994, during a visit to a Washington strip club, Casey says, Foggo wore a gun in a shoulder holster and flashed his identification at the club doorman. He was promptly seated by the stage. “Foggo sits there the whole night telling me how he likes to fuck girls in the ass,” Casey recalls. “He sees a girl there, he jabs you and says, ‘She’s ready to go–let’s double-team her.’ The weirdest combination of sex and domination! And Wilkes, he’s just laughing the whole time.” (Through an attorney, Foggo says that this incident never happened. According to his lawyer, Wilkes denies visiting strip clubs in adulthood.)

Other than that, the Vanity Fair piece is long on details, sprinkled liberally with spokesperson denials, yet sadly lacking in more salacious details. It’s asserted once again that Duke Cunningham enjoyed the company of paid escorts, for instance, but those escorts are again maddeningly non-gender-specific. Heck, we’ll take what we can get, though. MORE »

Ken Silverstein, over at Harper’s, has two pieces that, while complex, provide just that note of salaciousness necessary to keep the public (read: our) interest in the ongoing Cunningham/Wilkes/Lewis and William Jefferson cases. Join the exclusive poker party, after the jump.

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This just in: Junkets look really boring. MORE »

Three notable pieces were published this weekend on the painfully slow-moving hookers ‘n’ Congressmen ‘n’ spooks scandal.

• Newsweek’s Brent Wilkes profile

• Ken Silverstein’s “Nine Fingers” Basset story
• The San Diego Union-Tribune’s poker party report

While they are all rich with color (a Nine Fingers “prank letter” filled with sexually explicit talk was intercepted by the KGB, who then tried to blackmail him), they are also all short on hookers (with Newsweek not mentioning them at all). Closer looks, after the jump.

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* The Senate confirmation hearings for soon-to-be CIA Director Michael Hayden began this week. In the great tradition of the adult film industry, there will be two versions of the hearing; one for cable and one for pay-per-view, er, Senate Members’ Ears Only. We were actually pretty relieved that the hardcore hearings were closed, that shit was long enough. Finally, the denouement: he’s an idiot. MORE »

WatergateGate continues to be complicated. MORE »

* The week started off with a double shot of intelligence stories to get us all hot and bothered. Did we say hot? We meant super-hot. MORE »

AP bulletin sez the FBI executed search warrents on Goss’ house and office. Watergategate-related? Who the hell knows. More when we hear it. MORE »

Today’s Time article on Porter Goss, Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Dusty Foggo, and Brant Basset, while very informative, fails to call Basset “Nine Fingers” even once, which is, of course, shoddy journalism. Also, the closest it comes to mentioning hookers is quoting Foggo’s attorney as saying that there was “no hanky panky” at the Watergate poker parties. MORE »

After a terribly exciting coupla days, there was almost nothing today. Seriously, pick up the ball, entire rest of the press. Thank god for Ken Silverstein, our new favorite reporter, who’s just delivered his latest installment — Brant “Nine Fingers” Basset (the noted Dick Tracy villain) is moving into a central role, which we’re happy to hear. We thought he had a lot of potential when we first heard the name, and we’re happy to see him recognize it. MORE »