A military intelligence center in Martinsville that was once touted as a way to boost both national security and the local economy will do neither as of Monday, when it will close due to a lack of funding from the Pentagon.

The Department of Defense recently decided not to renew a contract for the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center because the work it did checking the backgrounds of non-U.S. vendors of military equipment was duplicated by four other government agencies.

"We have other entities that provide similar services," said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman.

Three years ago, U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Rocky Mount, requested $3.6 million in federal funds to create the center. A contract was later awarded to MZM Inc., which at the time was headed by Mitchell Wade, a key supporter of Goode's campaign.

Wade has since been convicted of bribing a California congressman for defense contracts and making illegal campaign contributions to Goode. While Goode has said he did not know his MZM-linked money was illegal, critics have accused him of catering to the interests of his largest campaign contributor.

Now, with the closing of the Martinsville operation, some are wondering if there was ever a need for the $15 million appropriated for the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center over the past three years.

"If they had somebody doing this work all along, why did we pay for it in the first place?" said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.

"This was about politics and not about military need from the get-go," Ashdown said.

But in a written statement, Goode said the Pentagon has given positive reports on the center to the House Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations. Goode blamed the closing on "recent negative publicity" about Wade's criminal case.

Regardless of what happened in the nation's capital, the impact in Martinsville is the loss of a high-tech employer that once promised 150 jobs and what Mayor Kimble Reynolds called "a beacon of hope" for the economically strapped city of 15,000.

As of Friday afternoon, there had been no official announcement from Athena Innovative Solutions, the company that purchased MZM last year and took over the Martinsville operation.

Officials with Athena, who have either declined to comment or not returned calls from The Roanoke Times over the past few months, did not respond again Friday to inquiries about the closing.

Confirmation of the facility's demise came from the Martinsville office of the Virginia Employment Commission, which was called to the office building in the Clearview Business Park on Friday to explain the process of seeking unemployment benefits to the 23 employees who remain.

Hesta Anderson, a supervisor with the VEC, said she was told that Monday would be the center's last day of operation.

In November 2003, Goode and Wade stood side by side as the MZM president promised to bring 150 jobs to the community for an operation that would make the whole country safer.

But Wade was not willing to make any promises to the state in exchange for $500,000 in economic incentives that went to the project. As a result, the city of Martinsville agreed to be held responsible for the money as part of a performance agreement if MZM's projections were not met.

Half of the performance agreement has been satisfied by the company's $4.4 million in capital investments, officials said. But it remains unclear whether the city will be forced to pay back some of the $250,000 of the grant that related to the number of promised jobs.

Because the city could get credit for the 30-some jobs that existed during the company's peak performance, Kimble agreed that it may not be a huge sum at stake if the state decides to seek reimbursement.

"When you say 'huge,' huge is relative in light of the fact that we've been losing revenues and having additional expenses," he said. "Any amount that's going to cost us ends up being huge and significant."

For an area long known for its factory jobs in the textile and furniture industries, MZM had once held the promise of much more than just 150 jobs that paid twice the average wage. The arrival of an information technology firm with security-cleared employees was seen as a coup for an economy that was seeking to reinvent itself.

"I thought it was a beacon of hope, and now it's once again another mark on our history that we could do without," Reynolds said.

But, he added: "The people of Martinsville and the surrounding area are very resilient. This may be a disappointment, but it's not going to stop us from getting up and trying again."