The Navy-Marine Corp. Intranet (NMCI) – the world’s largest intranet currently submitting to an $8 billion dollar facelift – is the subject of the latest lobbying scandal to hit Washington, D.C.

According to an Associated Press report in the Mercury news (Report: Congressman backed defense project critical to donors) a high-ranking California congressman is being fingered for preserving the controversial $8 billion intranet project after accepting a massive donation linked to a project sub-contractor.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, who now chairs the House Appropriations Committee, voted to preserve the intranet project despite pressures on the committee to cut monies from their budget. Rep. Lewis is denying a $130,000 donation from a big investor (Cerebus Capital Management) to one of the projects major sub-contractors (MCI) helped sway him in preserving the funding….

He said he had no knowledge of the connection between the investment firm Cerberus Capital Management and the $8.8 billion project to build a secure computer network for the Navy and Marines until he heard about it from USA Today.

"It is absolutely and unequivocally false to suggest that any decision on funding for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet was in any way based on a lobbyist's request, or as a favor to someone who was donating campaign funds," Lewis said.

"Neither I nor my staff have recommended adding money to this program - all of the funding approved has been included in the president's budget at the request of the Navy," he said.

Lewis, 71, from Redlands, Calif., chaired the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on defense in 2003, when the House Armed Services Committee voted to cut 10 percent from the 2004 budget for the Navy-Marine computer project.

The year before, the House Appropriations Committee had noted problems with the program, including cost overruns and delays.Lewis himself was quoted in The Washington Post saying he wasn't satisfied with the project's progress. He also voiced concern about the involvement of MCI, which was a major subcontractor on the project but was involved in an accounting scandal that caused it to file for bankruptcy in the summer of 2002.

But when the defense appropriations subcommittee, which controls defense dollars, passed its 2004 defense spending bill on June 16, 2003, money for the Navy-Marine Corps computer network was preserved.

Lewis said he changed his mind and backed the funding because the Navy asserted that the program's management had improved. On June 26, the full Appropriations Committee also approved the funding. By that time, Cerberus, a hedge fund that invests mainly in companies in or near bankruptcy, owned more than $140 million in stock and bonds of MCI WorldCom.