U.S. Seizes Spy Who Had Worked in White House

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – The FBI confirmed yesterday the arrest of a former U.S. Marine and aide to two vice presidents who is accused of funneling America’s secrets to politicians in his home country, the Philippines.


Yesterday, ABC News reported that the CIA and FBI believe Leandro Aragoncillo “used his top secret clearance to steal classified intelligence documents from White House computers.”


FBI special agent Richard Kolko confirmed that Mr. Aragoncillo was arrested last month and that “there is an ongoing investigation.” Mr. Aragoncillo started working at the White House in 1999.


If the allegations stick, it would be one of the most serious intelligence penetrations in recent American history. Mr. Aragoncillo, 46, worked for both Vice President Cheney and Vice President Gore, and is said to have funneled top secret documents from White House computers to opposition politicians in the Philippines, an American ally.


The only recent scandal that comes close was in 1971, when a Navy stenographer, Charles Radford, testified to Defense Department investigators that he had been relaying private policy discussions between President Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to his superiors at the Pentagon. But in that case the mole was working for the American military, not a foreign government.


ABC News reported that Mr. Aragoncillo, who is a naturalized American citizen, stole “damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines.” He “then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation.” A criminal complaint against him accuses him of downloading 100 documents when he was working for the bureau recently at an intelligence center at Fort Monmouth, N.J. The news organization quotes U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie as saying that Mr. Aragoncillo transferred most of his information via e-mail.


Asked for a comment yesterday about the potential scandal, a former senior CIA operations officer, Duane Clarridge, said he primarily blamed America’s spy catchers.


“The point is the total breakdown of the U.S. counterintelligence and the intelligence services has brought this about,” he said. “Obviously, the vetting of this guy for a sensitive job, whether he was a cook in the White House or an aid to vice presidents, fell down somewhere.”


As for the potential for major national security damage, Mr. Clarridge said he thought the penetration “was a major blow.”


A former associate deputy director of the FBI, though, said that the potential damage to American national security was minimal. “Anytime you have a trusted officer in your midst who is given access to top secret information and that person chooses to betray your trust, it is significant,” Buck Revell said.


“Frankly I don’t think it will be on the scale of the Robert Hanssen case, where you had a guy who was betraying secrets to our mortal enemy, the KGB. The Philippines are an allied country. This appears to be focused on obtaining political intelligence for partisan purposes in the Philippines rather than a threat to U.S. national security.”


Mr. Revell, who oversaw the bureau’s investigative and intelligence operations, did, however, dispute the view that the lax vetting process was to blame for the potential spy scandal.


“Most people who betray their country never intend when they take the job to do so. The vetting process occurs before they enter the job,” he said. Still, Mr. Revell said more could be done by the bureau to monitor those who do hold high-level security clearances.


The New York Sun

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