Marcus Stern is the journalist who discovered that Duke Cunningham had sold his San Diego home to a defense contractor for significantly more than it was worth. In an interview with San Diego City Beat he explains how he made the discovery.
With that red flag on Cunningham’s travels, Stern, in May, filled a few idle hours at his desk by performing routine “lifestyle audits” of members of the California Congressional delegation. That’s when he stumbled upon the sale of Cunningham’s home.Now this is journalism, this is what journalists are supposed to do. Marcus Stern is a real journalist, Bob Woodward is a political flack. As Josh Marshall says:
“I basically kicked over this one last stone, which was looking to see if he had upgraded his living accommodations,” Stern said. What he found was that Cunningham had purchased a new home in the exclusive neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe for $2.55 million.
“That seemed like a substantial upgrade to me, so I looked at how he did that,” Stern said. Using a variety of public records, he traced the details surrounding the sale of Cunningham’s old home in Del Mar.
“When I looked to see who bought it, I saw it was something called 1523 New Hampshire Avenue Inc.,” he said. Recognizing the company’s name as possibly linked to a Washington, D.C., address, Stern did a quick search and found that it was the same location as the D.C. headquarters of Wade’s company, MZM Inc.
“All of a sudden I got very interested,” he said. “From the time I started looking at the house until the time I understood what was going on took about 15 minutes. I think that they thought they were covering it up, but they covered it up with Plexiglas.”
Some stories get busted open with instincts and doggedness. Access sometimes just gets in the way.Perhaps Mr Stern could give Bob Woodward some lessons on what a journalist does.
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