WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- Lawmakers want to know how a limousine company implicated in a congressional bribe probe won a $21 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and his colleague Bill Pascrell wrote Monday to the department's inspector general demanding an inquiry into the contract granted to Shirlington Limousine and Transportation, a Virginia-based company run by a convicted felon.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the FBI was investigating allegations that the company was used by corrupt contractors to ferry prostitutes, now-jailed former California Republican Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham, and possibly other lawmakers, to parties at the Watergate Hotel.
"The current controversy involving Shirlington Limousine revolves around the company's alleged complicity in securing prostitution services for public officials," Thompson and Pascrell wrote, adding, "We are not interested in such accusations."
Instead, they said, they were concerned about how the company, "despite its unsatisfactory past performance and its apparent lack of resources" got the contract -- under which it provides small buses to ferry homeland security staff between the department's many offices in Washington, and drivers who chauffer senior department executives around the region in government-owned sedans.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the House subcommittee for management and oversight told the New York Times he was looking into the matter, and hinted it would be taken up as part of an ongoing investigation into personnel security practices at the department, sparked by the arrest of its deputy spokesman on child sex charges.
