A Pentagon spokesman yesterday confirmed they were leaving and said it was "a personal decision that they both made together."
CIFA was created by Burtt, with the aid of his old buddy, Lt. Gen. James C. King. King went on to become a Senior VP at MZM Inc. And eventually replaced president Mitchell Wade - when he copped a plea and resigned from MZM, the company he had started.
There's more...
Over the past three years, it (CIFA) has grown to become an analytic and operation organization with nine directorates and widening authority focused primarily on protecting defense facilities and personnel from terrorist attacks. CIFA's size and budget are classified, but according to congressional sources the agency has spent more than $1 billion over the past four years, mostly for outsourced services. One counterintelligence official yesterday estimated that CIFA had 400 full-time employees and 800 to 900 contractors working for it.
Many of those "contractors" were Foreign Supplier Assessment Center (FSAC) employees working for MZM Inc. including the Martinsville facility that was recently closed after the Pentagon cancelled their contracts. MZM employees were found to have bribed Republican Congressmen, including Virgil Goode (Rocky Mount,VA), inorder to win contracts.
Congressional earmarks are under investigation by the Pentagon and federal prosecutors. Burtt told his staff yesterday that he and his deputy director will resign at the end of the month
In an internal message, Burtt said, "I do not make this decision without trepidation, but the time is right to move on to the next phase of my career."
Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone last March ordered an internal study of how funding earmarked in defense bills led to CIFA contracts for MZM. The Defense Information Systems Agency, which has been given responsibility for the inquiry, said in a statement yesterday that "the investigation is still ongoing."
General Burtt did the right thing. He has resigned. It is past time for Virgil Goode to accept his own responsibility and step aside as Virginia's representative to the Congress. It is time for a change to ethical leadership in Virginia.
Virginia deserves better than to be represented by the corrupt Virgil Goode