Ex-Cheney aide probed in spy case
WASHINGTON – 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 marks 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, N.J., 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.
Joseph Estrada, the former Philippine president who was forced from office four years ago by mass demonstrations, has acknowledged receiving documents from Aragoncillo while the suspect was still 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 remains under house arrest.
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 now 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 not only sources of sensitive U.S. information but include frank and unflattering assessments of Philippine leaders.