liaison officer (and future Senator) Elizabeth Dole. Through Dole, Wedtech won a $32 million contract to produce small engines for the United States Army. This was only the first of many no-bid deals that eventually totaled $250 million. By the final years of Reagan's second term, Wedtech's crimes had become too numerous to hide. An independent counsel was appointed by Congress, which later charged Attorney General Edwin Meese with complicity in the scandal (his close friend had worked as a lobbyist for the company and sought help from Meese on Wedtech contract matters). While Meese was never convicted of any wrongdoing, he resigned in 1988 when the independent counsel delivered the report on Wedtech. Independent counsel McKay never prosecuted or sought indictment of Meese, but in his official report, which is still confidential, he was highly critical of Meese's ethics and urged further investigation of Meese's role in that scandal and others (such as Meese's efforts to help Bechtel Corporation build an oil pipeline for Saddam Hussein's Iraq). In all, more than 20 state, local, and federal government officials were convicted of crimes in connection to the scandal. Some of these convictions, however, were reversed on appeal in 1991 when it was found that Anthony Guariglia, former Wedtech president and a star government witness, had committed perjury, and that the prosecutors had reason to know he was committing perjury. Guariglia had been convicted of lying about stopping his compulsive gambling, and an appeals court found that the jury would have likely discredited his testimony if it had known about the perjury. Notes References Further reading Thompson, Marilyn W. Feeding the Beast: How Wedtech Became the Most Corrupt Little Company in America. Scribner; 1990 Sternberg, William. Feeding Frenzy: The Inside Story of Wedtech. Henry Holt & Co; 1989 Traub, James. Too Good to Be True: The Outrageous Story of Wedtech. Doubleday; 1990 Political corruption scandals in the United States Congressional scandals No-bid contracts Reagan administration controversies 1980s in the Bronx