"A former senior employee of MZM Inc. pleaded guilty yesterday to making illegal campaign donations to Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. of Virginia.

Richard A. Berglund, 46, of Valrico, Fla., formerly supervised the Martinsville office of MZM, according to prosecutors. He entered his plea before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Berglund and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc., are cooperating with the government's investigation, prosecutors said.

Wade pleaded guilty in February of conspiring to bribe former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to making illegal campaign donations to Goode and another lawmaker, and to making corrupt payments to Pentagon officials. Wade has not been sentenced yet.

Berglund, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, could be sentenced Jan. 18 to up to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine. But he isn't likely to face the maximum penalty if the government is satisfied with his cooperation.

Berglund now works for a defense contractor in military intelligence, according to remarks by his lawyer in court proceedings, and he will depart in September for a three-month stint in Iraq.

He was accused of helping Wade in a scheme in which they used Wade's money to reimburse MZM employees illegally for campaign contributions to an unnamed lawmaker, prosecutors said.

That lawmaker was Goode, R-5th, the Virginian's spokesman has acknowledged. Goode has said he did not know that donations from Berglund and his wife were illegally reimbursed, and Goode has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Goode belongs to the House Appropriations Committee. He helped get a $3.6 million appropriation to set up a facility that MZM later was selected to operate in Martinsville, called the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center.

In 2005, Berglund got cash from Wade to fund campaign contributions in the names of Berglund, his wife and two MZM employees in Martinsville, according to prosecutors. Four checks for $2,000 each were given to Wade, who handed them to the unnamed lawmaker at a March 4, 2005, fundraising event, prosecutors said.

Wade did not inform the lawmaker the contributions were illegal, a statement by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Kenneth L. Wainstein, reiterated yesterday.

Later last year, Congress passed an annual defense spending bill with $9 million for the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center. Goode has said his efforts were aimed at getting good jobs for a hard-hit region and fulfilling a valuable mission for the Pentagon.

The facility, now operated by a successor company to MZM, investigates the backgrounds of potential foreign suppliers of products to the Defense Department.

Asked for comment about Berglund's guilty plea, Goode's press secretary, Linwood Duncan, pointed out that the congressman had given MZM-related campaign donations to charity, according to The Associated Press.

Berglund and his lawyer, Thomas G. Connolly, refused to answer a reporter's questions when they left court yesterday." (Peter Hardin, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 22, 2006)