Mark Critz, a former staffer to the late Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), has asked an ethics panel to release transcripts of interviews conducted with him when the panel was probing earmarks by Murtha.

Critz's request of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) follows concerns raised by a political rival about Critz's role in those earmarks. The rival, former state Treasurer Barbara Hafer, has since dropped out of the race to fill the House seat that Murtha's death left vacant.

According to Roll Call:

The OCE report, which concluded that Murtha did not take campaign donations into account when providing earmarks for PMA clients, included summaries of interviews with Murtha and several staff members, but Critz’s interview was not included.

Critz’s request is apparently the first of its kind for the Office of Congressional Ethics, which was established in March 2008, and it is not clear whether the subject of an OCE investigation can request the release of documents.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is widely known as Congress' king of earmarks, and he often justifies them as his way of creating jobs. However, in this recent article, the Washington Post points out that most of the projects created through Rep. Murtha's earmarks fall short of the job-creation promises that were made:

Of 16 local companies the congressman has helped win federal earmarks, 10 have generated far fewer jobs than forecast, and half of those already have closed operations in his district. Murtha's strategy yielded some successes too. Four firms have expanded dramatically with the aid of earmarks, notably Concurrent Technologies Corp., which after more than a dozen years of earmarks has grown to employ 800 in Johnstown and now wins competitively bid contracts.

The Post analysis illustrates the fleeting success of some of the companies backed by earmarks. Some of the jobs generated by Murtha's earmarks cost about $2 million each, and scores disappeared as soon as projects were completed.

So, even if you set aside the ethical issues involved in the process of earmarking, the Murtha earmarks have not created the number of jobs that had been predicted -- and many of those jobs didn't last long.

As 2009 draws to a close, CREW is looking back at what quickly became a busy year for ethical lapses in our federal government. Today, CREW released its list of the Top Ten Ethics Scandals of 2009 – a roundup of the year’s most outrageous government scandals.

The unranked list includes:

Believe us – we had a plethora of scandals to choose from.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, explained CREW’s hopes for the new year:

It would be nice if 2010 proved to be the year politicians put Americans’ interests above their own, but I won’t hold my breath.

Click here (PDF) to read CREW’s Top Ten Ethics Scandals of 2009.

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig, who has been writing extensively about the dealings of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), focuses today on the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. The Institute receives federal funding, courtesy of Rep. Murtha -- and the earmarks keep coming:

The buzzer is broken at the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security, and a note invites visitors, "Please knock." On a summer afternoon, a lone intern answers the door of the mostly empty basement offices that through the years have overseen $50 million in federal money awarded to projects designed to make the nation safer.

Named for the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, who has shepherded most of its funding, the Murtha Institute was supposed to embark on projects to protect the country from terrorists and clean up environmental dangers. Much of the work went to companies and friends close to the congressman, and few of the projects met their goals, a Washington Post investigation shows.

But the institute's spotty performance and internal turmoil have not deterred Murtha (D-Pa.) or his alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which houses the center, from seeking more money or dreaming big about the future.

Plans are underway to move the Murtha Institute from its dormitory basement suite to a $53 million IUP athletic arena and conference center now under construction. Murtha secured a $3 million federal earmark for the building two years ago, and he sought another earmark this year before abruptly changing course as investigations of his defense appropriations and lobbying connections heated up. Murtha redirected some of that request to IUP research.

In a district that also boasts a regional airport named for Murtha and nearly a dozen other facilities bearing his name, the institute is another example of how the congressman has used federal money to revitalize this economically depressed former coal-mining region. In doing so, he has raised questions among watchdog groups and outside critics about using taxpayer money to fund projects that appear to mostly benefit Murtha loyalists.

"He who pays the most homage to Murtha is the one who gets the money," said Cathy Wentzel, who managed a research group linked to the Murtha Institute and left when her boss was fired.

Today, CREW sent a letter to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), as the senator pushes to end the flow of federal funds earmarked by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) to a little-used airport in the representative’s congressional district.  We alerted Sen. DeMint to a similarly-funded and little-used airport in Rep. Hal Rogers’ (R-KY) district, and urges the senator to include this airport in his efforts to eliminate wasteful government spending. Our letter to Senator DeMInt and the related articles can be found here.

After receiving a $3 million grant in 2003 from the Federal Aviation Administration, Lake Cumberland Regional Airport in Rep. Rogers’ hometown of Somerset, Kentucky sat empty for three years while searching for airline carrier service. In 2005, Rep. Rogers asked then-Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta for an annual $1 million flight-subsidizing grant for the airport, which the airport received. The airport’s first commercial flight did not take off until December 27, 2008, and flew only 45 minutes to nearby Nashville, Tennessee. As of June 2009, there are also flights between Somerset and Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday mornings and Friday evenings.

Lake Cumberland Regional Airport’s situation is strikingly similar to that of the John P. Murtha Airport in Rep. Murtha’s congressional district. Rep. Murtha has secured earmarks totaling $150 million dollars over the past ten years to benefit the airport, yet an average of 20 people per day flew out in 2008 on one of the airport’s three daily departing flights – all to Washington, D.C.

CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said today:

While we applaud Sen. DeMint’s efforts to reduce wasteful spending, we’d like to see him take a more even-handed approach. Rep. Rogers’ airport no more merits federal funding than does Rep. Murtha’s. Wasteful spending is wasteful spending – regardless of party affiliation.

A study by the Center for Public Integrity, "The Murtha Method," shows how lobbyists, campaign contributions and earmarks for projects not wanted by the Department of Defense were part of the usual mix for many members of Murtha's appropriations subcommittee:

For months, a cloud has swirled around Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and the relationship that Murtha and other subcommittee members had with the PMA Group, a lobbying firm filled with former subcommittee aides.

Murtha and fellow panel members Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) steered a host of earmarks to PMA clients, and those clients and PMA staffers gave campaign contributions to the lawmakers. Aspects of those relationships are the subject of a Justice Department probe, which is thought to be looking at whether there were explicit quid pro quo exchanges of favors for cash, which would make crimes out of relationships that are otherwise legal. The House ethics committee is also looking at the situation, and the PMA Group closed following an FBI raid late last year.

Now, a computer analysis by the Center for Public Integrity has revealed that fully three-quarters of the subcommittee members have been involved in similar patterns of behavior — in circles of relationships fraught with potential conflicts of interest, involving former congressional staffers-turned lobbyists, earmarks, and campaign cash. In these circles, former staffers became lobbyists for defense contractors; the contractors received earmarks from the representatives; and the representatives received campaign contributions from the lobbyists or the contractors.

The Center’s analysis, which covered fiscal year 2008, found these relationship circles included not only PMA but 10 other lobbying firms. More than 50 earmarks are involved, totaling more than $100 million, while the campaign contributions amounted to more than $1 million. The examination relied on data from Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Center for Responsive Politics, and the U.S. Senate’s Office of Public Records.

The House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee is providing the ten members of the House Ethics Committee with 29 earmarks. The problem is that the House Ethics Committee is investigating the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. John Murtha, over earmarks obtained by the PMA Group. Carol Leonnig at the Washington Post reports:

Members of the House ethics committee, who are investigating a pattern of lawmakers steering federal funds to generous defense contractors, are all set to have their pet military projects funded by the same committee whose activities they are probing.

The 10 committee members together would get 29 earmarks -- or $59 million in federal funding for projects they requested in their districts or states -- under a proposed House military spending bill up for a vote today or tomorrow. The details were approved last week by the House defense appropriations subcommittee, whose practice of steering earmarks to a well-connected lobby firm close to the chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), is the subject of the ethics committee's investigation.

Ethics committee chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) would receive $9.5 million in three earmarks under Murtha's bill. That includes $4 million to clean up contamination at the former Almaden (Calif.) Air Force Station, $2 million for "printed and conformal electronics" research, and $3.5 million to help Stanford University aeronautical research into the use of parafin-based rocket fuel.

Last month, Lofgren's committee announced it was investigating the ties between members of Congress and PMA Group, a lobby firm run by one of Murtha's close friends. It did not name the members, but Murtha and fellow defense appropriation members Reps. Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) and James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) have longtime ties to PMA and have orchestrated hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA clients in recent years. The PMA Group closed after being raided by the FBI late last year, and Visclosky's congressional records were subpoenaed in May by a grand jury investigating defense contracts.

Congressional ethics experts said that the ethics committee earmarks create at least the appearance of a conflict of interest, and that some in the public would naturally question how thoroughly the committee might investigate fellow members on the appropriations subcommittee that granted their funding wishes.

As we noted yesterday, of the investigations swirling around him, John Murtha asked the question "“What’s that got to do with me?”  Many people want to know the answer to that question. And, another guilty plea, with a commitment to cooperate with federal authorities, may start providing some answers:

A federal investigation into defense contractors, including some with links to Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, appears to be gathering steam - and valuable help.

Mark O'Hair, a Defense Department program manager, pleaded guilty Monday to making a false statement on a federal disclosure form. He acknowledged lying about business ties he had to companies that received money from a military contract he oversaw.

The plea agreement, reached in federal court in Florida, does not specify a penalty for O'Hair. But the plea deal does require O'Hair to cooperate with federal agents.

It's the second guilty plea and pledge of cooperation that prosecutors have won recently in a swirl of charges of kickbacks and corruption surrounding several defense contractors with which Mr. Murtha has ties.

Mr. Murtha has been listed as one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has accused him of inappropriately doling out earmarks to defense contractors that have contributed to his campaign.

Rep. John Murtha and a New York Times editorial both ask a similar question. What does the on-going criminal investigation of Murtha earmark beneficiaries have to do with Murtha?  CREW would like know, too:

One of the most favored insiders in Representative John Murtha’s rich churn of defense earmarks has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, shedding light on a twisting, pay-to-play money trail. The contractor, Richard Ianieri, admitted taking $200,000 in bribes from another big defense contractor in the Murtha orbit, and is cooperating with investigators.

“What’s that got to do with me?” commented Mr. Murtha, who previously lavished praise and tens of millions of dollars in contracts on the two companies caught up in the criminal investigation.

He asks an ever more urgent question. Investigators have not identified him as a target. But the inquiry is backtracking a trail of hundreds of millions awarded to Pentagon contractors who gratefully requited with tens of millions in political donations to Democrats on the appropriations subcommittee headed by Mr. Murtha.

And, we agree with the Times on the need for an ethics investigation. But, even then, there's no guarantee the House Ethics Committee will do anything. Congress does not police itself and we may be witnessing yet another classic example of that.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) isn't the focus of a federal criminal investigation. But, an earmark he arranged is. It involves a tangled web of lobbyists, including Robert Murtha, defense firms and an Air Force officer. In yet another Washington Post investigative piece by Carol Leonning, we learn some of the details of this investigation:

When an Air Force command in north Florida sought new battlefield technologies,  Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) steered millions in federal dollars its way to hire defense contractors.

The research effort at the Pensacola Air Force base fell apart, however, when investigators found evidence that it was used to improperly pay a series of companies linked to Murtha. A handful of defense firms were paid for work that was never done or not called for in the contracts. Some of the companies involved, based in Wyoming, Florida and Murtha's district in Pennsylvania, had hidden owners, prosecutors allege; one was secretly owned by the Air Force official who helped approve the payments.

As prosecutors reveal new details of their criminal probe into the $8 million earmark that Murtha arranged for the Air Force project, one familiar player is never mentioned by authorities. Several of the companies had hired the lobbying firm of the lawmaker's brother, Robert C. "Kit" Murtha.

Today, one of Kit Murtha's earliest clients has agreed to tell the government what he did and the crimes he said he saw committed as the lead contractor on the Murtha-orchestrated project. Richard "Rick" Ianieri, former chief executive of Coherent Systems International, is expected to plead guilty to taking kickbacks and preparing fraudulent invoices. Ianieri, a Pennsylvania entrepreneur, saw his business grow dramatically after hiring Kit Murtha's firm, KSA Consulting.

There is no indication that Murtha or his brother were aware of the alleged misuse of funds. Charges have focused on a small group of defense executives and the Air Force official and, thus far, companies that received funds improperly are not accused of wrongdoing.