Washington – An FBI intelligence analyst who once worked as a military aide in the White House is accused of passing secret government documents to current and former officials in the Philippines.
Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, a former Marine who worked as an analyst at Fort Monmouth, N.J., was arrested last month along with a former Philippines National Police intelligence official, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors in Newark, N.J.
ABC News reported that Ara goncillo served as a military aide in the White House for three years during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and stole documents from White House computers, an unprecedented security breach.
Some of the information involved the president of the Philippines and was passed on to opposition politicians, ABC said.
“We are cooperating fully with the investigation,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
He declined to comment further because the FBI probe “is an ongoing investigation.”
U.S. District Judge Madeline Arleo in Newark signed an order Monday continuing the case so that prosecutors and Aragoncillo’s lawyer could negotiate a plea agreement.
Such orders often indicate defendants have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Aragoncillo had been working at the New Jersey FBI facility since July 2004.
A 17-page criminal complaint against Aragoncillo filed by the FBI alleges he used e-mail accounts with Hotmail and Yahoo to forward secret documents during the past year to one former and two current “high-level national public officials” in the Philippines. The officials are not named in the complaint.
He came to the FBI’s attention when his alleged go-between, a man identified as Michael Ray Aquino, a former deputy director of the now-disbanded Philippine national police, was arrested March 7 for overstaying his tourist visa, according to a Justice Department statement.
Aragoncillo, who lived in Woodbury, N.J., contacted officers of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement division to inquire about their investigation. He identified himself as an FBI employee and a friend of Aquino, who lived in Queens, N.Y., the statement said.
The immigration authorities notified the FBI, and the bureau began an audit of Aragoncillo’s computer usage, discovering he had conducted extensive keyword searches for data on the Philippines and either printed or downloaded 37 documents classified as secret.
In one instance on Aug. 5, Aragoncillo was videotaped copying a classified document to a disk on his computer at work, placing the disk in a personal bag on the floor and then carrying it home, according to the court document.
