Defense of Country His Only Defense

In the beginning of his political career 16 years ago, it’s what marked him as special.

On Friday, when that career ended in a prison sentence, his heroic service in Vietnam was the only thing he was willing to defend in his tearful plea for mercy.

And it was just enough to persuade a federal court judge to sentence former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to eight years and four months in prison on bribery and tax evasion charges instead of the 10 years that prosecutors were seeking.

It was a San Diego-specific end to a scandal with national significance. On Saturday at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, near the F-4 Phantom that Cunningham was piloting when he shot down the first two of his five MIG “kills” in Vietnam, people were divided over whether the judge had done the right thing.

Absolutely not, said Rick Myers, 50, who works for a golf equipment maker and whose father was also a Navy pilot during Vietnam.

“As a pilot, Duke was a hero, but as a congressman he was a flop,” said Myers as he looked up at the big plane. “He betrayed us.”

Myers’ mother was even more adamant. “It’s as bad as selling secrets to the enemy,” said Sue Myers, 74, who was visiting from Virginia.

Aaron Barnum, 56, who served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, said there was something unseemly about the 64-year-old Republican using his service to beg for mercy.

“Most guys who went and did their jobs, they don’t want any special treatment,” Barnum said. “This whole thing of ‘Hey, I’m a veteran, give me a break’ has got to stop.”

Another former Marine, Juan Leal, 43, agreed. “My whole family is military and we’ve talked a lot about Cunningham,” he said. “We’re all disgusted by what he did.”

Still, there were those like Arthur Berry, who agreed with U.S. District Court Judge Larry Alan Burns that Cunningham’s service in Vietnam had earned him a measure of leniency.

“He fought and risked his life; that’s got to be worth something,” said Berry, 42, a visitor from Iowa who had followed the case. “It’s not like he’s going free; he’s just getting a little credit for time served.”

Alex Henein, 19, a college student who first visited the museum when he was 5, said that “Duke was a veteran, he served, not like a lot of other people. He’s not the only politician to do this, just the first one to get caught.”

After Cunningham pleaded guilty in November and admitted he took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors, museum officials rejected suggestions that the museum remove the F-4 Phantom from a place of honor in the Edwin D. McKellar Jr. Pavilion of Flight.

“We continue to honor Duke’s service,” museum spokeswoman Ruth Varonfakis said Friday. “We’re heartened to see that the judge wanted to do that, as well. We can’t take that away from him.”

A plaque beneath the plane notes that Cunningham and radar operator Willie Driscoll were the only Navy aces of the Vietnam War, a designation reserved for shooting down five enemy.

Cunningham received the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart after he and Driscoll were shot down and narrowly escaped being captured in the Gulf of Tonkin. Driscoll, now a Del Mar real estate broker, was in the courtroom when Burns handed down Cunningham’s sentence.

This is a community whose defining characteristic is the massive presence of the U.S. military, a presence that has shaped its history, its politics and the nature of its civic life. Military service is revered here.

On Friday morning, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln left North Island Naval Air Station on deployment. That night, the mother of a Marine led a rally in Balboa Park supporting the war in Iraq. And on Saturday, a Marine helicopter squadron returned from Iraq and a Navy coastal warfare unit returned from the Persian Gulf.

Born in Pasadena, Burns went to college and law school in San Diego and has spent his entire working life here, as a county prosecutor and then a federal prosecutor and now a judge.

It was Cunningham’s status as a war hero, a true Top Gun, that propelled him to Congress in 1990 in his first try for public office. He defeated the Democratic incumbent, a former Marine.

In urging the judge not to consider Cunningham’s military record during sentencing, prosecutors cited an appellate court ruling in another case that a judge had erred in giving leniency to a Vietnam veteran because he had saved civilians at My Lai.

Cunningham was taking bribes “while squandering government money on non-essential projects that were not in the national interest,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip Halpern said.

Burns agreed with the prosecutors’ recommendations on nearly every other issue but not their argument against leniency.

Although he denounced Cunningham for misusing his office, hurting the efforts of “honest politicians” and betraying the public, Burns said Cunningham still has “some equity” because of his Vietnam service.

“I think your country owes you,” Burns said.

Cunningham mentioned his Vietnam service but was at a loss to explain his descent into criminality.

Of the $2.4 million in bribes listed by prosecutors, upward of $2 million has been attributed to his zeal to buy a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, possibly as a retirement home for himself and his now-estranged wife, Nancy.

Defense contractor Mitchell Wade, in pleading guilty to bribery, admitted paying $700,000 over market value for Cunningham’s home in Del Mar Heights so that he could buy the mansion.

Wade and another co-conspirator also allegedly provided more than $1 million for Cunningham to pay the mortgage on the Rancho Santa Fe house and $200,000 to pay the capital gains tax on the Del Mar Heights house.

“After years of service to my country going the right way, I made a very wrong turn,” Cunningham told Burns.