Suppose you were Chairman of The House Intelligence Committee and it was your job to investigate what happened in Benghazi. What if your wife were the CEO of the very company contracted to provide that security? Would that not be a rather glaring conflict of interest?
Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is charged with investigating the adequacy of security at the Benghazi compound prior to the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack. Rogers has announced recently, and rather abruptly, that he will be stepping down from representing Michigan in 2014 to host a national radio show syndicated by Cumulus Media.
His wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers was the president and the CEO of the company that was contracted by the State Department to provide that security. Mrs. Rogers, until recently, served as president and CEO of Aegis LLC, the contractor to the United States Department of State for intelligence-based and physical security services.
Aegis, a British private military company with overseas offices in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kenya, Nepal and the U.S., won a $10 billion, 5-year contract with the State Department to provide security for U.S. diplomatic posts around the world.
Congressman Rogers, has been criticized for dragging his feet in the Benghazi investigation. Only when pressure from backbenchers on his committee became intense did he agree to hold a hearing at which former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morrell testified.
Even then, observers noted how mild he was in his questioning, preferring to let Congressmen Peter King, R-N.Y., and Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., take the lead in asking the tough questions.
How on earth can the Rogers family justify having a husband who chairs a Congressional committee charged with reviewing the performance of his wife’s company in guarding the Benghazi compound?
Demands for a special select committee to investigate Benghazi have been heard ever since the attack took place, but now that the Rogers’ conflict of interest is exposed, they are likely to escalate.
The accusations of conflict of interest surface at the same time as the Inspector General for the State Department reported that $6 billion in department contracts, largely in Afghanistan and Iraq, couldn’t be accounted for. The contracts covering the work have disappeared.
Authors Note: Today's post is excerpted from Dick Morris http://www.dickmorris.com
That's our government, folks. Corrupt from the Presidency, the Senate and Congress. Some things never change.....
That's it for now. More soon.
Stay Tuned !
