FBI looking at charity getting appropriations through Murtha

CBS:

CBS News has learned the FBI is investigating a little-known not-for-profit organization called Commonwealth Research Institute. It's located, like a lot of Rep. John Murtha's, D-Penn., pet projects, in his hometown, Johnstown, Penn.

Commonwealth gets the same benefits as the Salvation Army or any other charity: It doesn't have to pay taxes. But its line of work may be surprising. It's a defense contractor.

"It certainly raises a question," says Dean Zerbe, a former top Senate investigator. He questions Commonwealth's tax exempt status, saying it seems to do business just like any for-profit defense contractor.

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Commonwealth officials responded in a Dec. 3, 2000 letter saying they anticipated their research would be for the "Department of Defense, Justice Department, National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health (sic)." Commonwealth officials told the IRS that they may have some classified work but that only, "some small portion (10-20 percent) of the work completed will be restricted [from publication] for good reason."

It was partly on that basis that the IRS ultimately granted Commonwealth charitable status.

But nine years later, Commonwealth has apparently not published a single word of its government-backed research.

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Commonwealth Research gets all of its funding from government contracts. As for what taxpayers get in return, that’s hard to say. Commonwealth doesn’t have a website and wouldn’t tell CBS News how many employees work there or how they have spent millions of tax dollars.

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For the biggest hint as to what Commonwealth is all about, it may help to know something about its parent company, Concurrent Technologies. Concurrent is another defense contractor in Johnstown, also registered as a charity at the same address. And, with the help of Murtha and The PMA Group, a lobby firm that's also under FBI investigation, Concurrent has gotten a billion dollars-plus in defense contracts and earmarks.

Concurrent employees have also given Murtha’s campaign over $95,000 in donations since 2002.

This isn't the first time Commonwealth has been involved in controversy. Back in 2007, the charity mysteriously paid $26,000 to a Pentagon official who was in between positions at the Pentagon and waiting to be confirmed for a top Air Force procurement position. The official admitted to a Washington Post reporter that he hadn’t done any work to earn the Commonwealth payment. Less than three weeks after The Post published an article on the controversy, the official committed suicide.

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There is much more.

I have seen other stories on Commonwealth that raised questions about the work they have done on Murtha appropriation earmarks.

It appears the FBI has a pretty wide scale investigation of Murtha related entities as well as the PMA investigation. It maybe so big that it will take longer than Murtha's current term to reach a conclusion. I would say they think Murtha is up to something and it involves several people and entities.