The Justice Department is investigating whether a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Philippines stole classified documents while he worked in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and provided the information to opposition politicians in Manila, Bush administration officials said Wednesday.
The possibility that Leandro Aragoncillo was passing the material while stationed as a U.S. Marine security official at the White House is a dramatic expansion of the case against him and a former Philippines police official, Michael Ray Aquino.
Both were arrested and charged in federal court in Newark last month with sending classified information obtained this year to the Philippines–more than two years after Aragoncillo left the White House and went to work as an FBI intelligence analyst.
Officials from the White House, Justice Department and FBI declined to comment late Wednesday, other than to confirm that Aragoncillo first went to work at the White House in 1999 when Al Gore was vice president. ABC News reported Wednesday night that Aragoncillo had admitted taking classified documents while he worked in Cheney’s office. Officials with the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Newark declined to comment on the report.
Joseph Estrada, the former Philippine president who was forced from office four years ago by mass demonstrations, has acknowledged receiving documents from Aragoncillo while he was in the Marines. Estrada told a Philippine newspaper last month that Aragoncillo had passed material while visiting him at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Manila, where the former president was receiving treatment while being held on corruption charges from 2001 through 2003. Part of that stay would coincide with Aragoncillo’s time in Cheney’s office. Estrada is under house arrest.
U.S. caught in middle
The prosecutions of Aragoncillo and Aquino have ignited a political firestorm in the Philippines, and officials from the two countries say the United States is caught in a feud between President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and rivals attempting to force her from office.
Federal prosecutors in New Jersey charged last month that Aragoncillo conspired with Aquino to steal more than 100 documents this year from the FBI, CIA and State Department. The men are accused of feeding classified material about the Philippines to politicians seeking to topple the government.
Aragoncillo retired in 2004 after 21 years in the Marines and began working for the FBI as an intelligence analyst. Reports apparently based on the classified material allegedly downloaded by Aragoncillo are being published in the Philippines. The reports reveal sources of sensitive U.S. information and frank and unflattering assessments of Philippine leaders.
In one such report published in a Manila newspaper, comments attributed to diplomats at the U.S. Embassy described Arroyo as weak and overbearing with little popular credibility. Aragoncillo, 46, and Aquino, 39, were arrested in New Jersey on Sept. 10 and are being held without bail. Aquino, a former deputy director of the Philippine National Police and a Philippine national, is to be indicted in Newark on Thursday, according to one law enforcement official.
A criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey charges that Aragoncillo shared the classified documents with Aquino as well as with two high-level Philippine public officials and a third former high-level official. There is speculation in Manila about their identities, but U.S. prosecutors have yet to reveal the names.
The goal: Oust regime
“We’re talking about opposition people and their desire to replace the current administration,” said a U.S.-based American official familiar with the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case is active.
According to the criminal complaint, federal investigators first took an interest in Aragoncillo after he tried to intervene on behalf of Aquino, who had been arrested in March for overstaying a tourist visa.
Aquino had come to the United States almost four years earlier and settled in New York. When he left his homeland, he was under indictment for involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a public relations executive who had quarreled with Estrada and the man’s driver.
After Aragoncillo contacted U.S. immigration officials this spring, identifying himself as an FBI employee and Aquino’s friend, the FBI launched an audit of its internal database, which offers access to documents from various government agencies.
Investigators discovered Aragoncillo had used his top-secret clearance to download and print information relating to the Philippines although the material was outside his area of assignment, the complaint alleges. He then allegedly forwarded the information by e-mail, telephone and text message to the officials in the Philippines.
Federal prosecutors have charged the men with conspiracy and acting as unregistered agents under the direction of foreign officials. Aquino’s attorney has denied the allegations. Aragoncillo has offered no public statement.
