Ex-CIA official sentenced to 37 months

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The CIA's former No. 3 official was sentenced Thursday to 37 months in prison for corrupting the agency's contracts, officials said.

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo was portrayed at trial as an opportunist who tried to profit from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, The Washington Post reported.

Foggo was accused of steering CIA contracts to a California businessman, who was a former Defense Department contractor, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty in September, making him the highest-ranking member of a federal intelligence or law enforcement agency to be convicted of a crime.

"One man's crisis is another man's opportunity, and Mr. Foggo proved himself to be a very prolific opportunist," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Forge said at the sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. "A man who exploits a national crisis should be humble enough to not call himself a patriot."

Foggo pleaded guilty to wire fraud and admitted that he conspired to defraud the government through his relationship with Brent Wilkes. Prosecutors said Wilkes took Foggo and his family on a $30,000 Hawaiian vacation and courted the CIA official with expensive meals throughout the Washington area.

In return, Foggo helped Wilkes get lucrative contracts, including one in which the CIA paid 60 percent more than it should have for water a Wilkes-affiliated company supplied to CIA outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq.