Air Force official Mark O’Hair pleaded guilty in connection with a program that received an earmark through Rep. Murtha, according to this Roll Call story.
According to the plea agreement, filed in a federal court in Florida, in May 2005, “Congress passed a tsunami relief act which included within the provisions of the act an $8.2 million earmark for the development of the ‘Mobile Common Data Link Gateway.’ Coherent Systems International, Inc. (CSI) had lobbied for this earmark appropriation.”
Roll Call reported in June that Coherent was represented by KSA Consulting, the lobbying firm that employed Murtha’s brother, Kit, and that the Congressman had provided this earmark to Coherent by eliminating the same sum from a project that had been designated for a previous client of his brother’s firm.