"Fifth District Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount, announced Monday that he is giving $88,000 in campaign contributions from employees and the political action committee of the former national security firm MZM Inc. to a list of charities 'across the 5th District.'

Goode is giving $30,000 from former MZM contributions to Gleaning for the World Inc., a Campbell County-based charity run by a retired Methodist minister, to distribute food, clothing and other donated items to the poor.

The other $58,000 is going in undisclosed amounts to an unspecified number of volunteer fire departments, rescue squads and animal shelters, Goode said in a news release. He was not available for interviews Monday and his office staff said the number of charities and amounts being given are not known.

'To my knowledge, the only list is in his head,' said press secretary Linwood Duncan. 'That's Virgil.'

Goode is giving away the campaign contributions received during the past three years from employees and the company PAC of a firm associated with a Washington bribery scandal involving no-bid defense contracts written into budgets by congressmen.

The former president and founder of MZM, Mitchell J. Wade, has been implicated in a bribery case involving former Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, a California Republican who surrendered his seat in Congress as he pleaded guilty to charges late last month.

Goode told The Daily Progress last week that he was giving MZM contributions to charity 'because of the involvement of one of the principals in it,' whom he acknowledged was Wade. When asked about Cunningham's guilty pleas to bribery charges, Goode said, 'I was shocked and amazed at what was going on.'

Wade sold his interest in MZM, which now operates in Albemarle County, Martinsville, Washington, Tampa, as well as Seoul, South Korea, and Baghdad, Iraq. The company now goes by Athena Innovative Solutions Inc., its new name as of Oct. 1.

Goode is the leading recipient of campaign donations tied to MZM, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending and lists more than $94,000 in gifts to Goode from the defense contractor, its employees and their immediate families.

Democrats said Monday that Goode's cozy relationship with MZM, which currently employs 160 people in the 5th District, leaves many questions about ethics unanswered.

Al Weed, a Nelson County Democrat who lost a bid to unseat Goode last year and is one of two announced challengers for 2006, said Goode's gifts to charity are tardy and 'shouldn't stop people from thinking about what MZM thought they were getting' for the contributions.

'He is on an intelligence subcommittee' and could be steering tenuous federal contracts to Martinsville for MZM's benefit, Weed said. He said the timing of the gifts raised ethical concerns.

Goode's other Democratic Party challenger, Bern Ewert of Charlottesville, said, 'It took a scandal and a lot of negative publicity for Goode to do the right thing. We need a member of Congress who will always act ethically, not just when the heat is on.'

Ewert, a former Roanoke city manager, said the money should have been given to charity 'long before now, once Goode knew the facts of former Rep. Cunningham's corrupt activities.'

'Real jobs are not associated with tainted money,' Ewert added.

The Rev. Ronald Davidson, president of Gleaning for the World, said the $30,000 gift from Goode that he learned about Monday would go a long way to help poor residents of the 5th District as well as victims in the Gulf Coast states of this year's hurricane disasters.

'This is going to allow us to do a tremendous amount of good for a lot of people,' Davidson said from the charity's home base in Concord, 10 miles east of Lynchburg.

'We are going to be providing about $1 million in supplies to Southside Virginia and the Gulf,' Davidson said. 'For every dollar we receive, we can provide $39 worth of items.'

He said Goode is working to help his charity obtain blankets from a federal source to provide food, toys and perhaps medical supplies to the poor in the southern portions of the 5th District.

Since the hurricanes, 'we have placed 118 tractor-trailer loads in the gulf' states, Davidson said. 'We are in the process of providing about $6 million worth of brand new furniture and linens.'" (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, December 13, 2005)