-Caveat Lector-
Deutch May Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor, Avoid Prison Time
By David A. Vise and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 19, 2001 ; Page A08
Former CIA director John M. Deutch is negotiating with the
Justice Department over the possibility that he might plead
guilty to a misdemeanor for keeping classified information on his
home computers, sources familiar with the talks said yesterday.
Attorney General Janet Reno had wanted to resolve the
high-profile case before she left office yesterday, but her
interim successor, Eric H. Holder Jr., has assumed responsibility
for overseeing its resolution, the sources said.
Although Deutch has been reluctant to agree to plead guilty, a
one-count misdemeanor plea would enable him to avoid prison time
and eliminate the threat of a criminal indictment on felony
charges.
Uncertainty over former senator John D. Ashcroft's nomination as
attorney general has increased pressure on Deutch to cut a deal,
because it is not clear whether a new attorney general would
decide to prosecute him on more serious felony charges for
mishandling classified information, the sources said.
Deutch's lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell of Williams & Connolly, did
not return phone calls seeking comment last night.
The Justice Department initially declined to prosecute Deutch in
April 1999 after CIA security officials discovered he had written
and stored hundreds of highly classified intelligence reports on
unsecure home computers linked to the Internet. Deutch's conduct
-- for which he later publicly apologized -- was discovered as he
was leaving the CIA in December 1996 after a year and a half in
office.
Reno asked prosecutor Paul E. Coffey to take a second look at
the case after a leaked CIA inspector general's report ignited
controversy on Capitol Hill early last year. Coffey later
concluded that criminal charges should be filed against Deutch,
who returned to his professor's post at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
At the time Coffey began his review, Justice Department officials
said they were worried about the appearance of a "double
standard" after filing a massive, 59-count felony indictment
against former Los Alamos physicist Wen Ho Lee for downloading
classified nuclear weapons data.
Authorities initially identified Lee as an espionage suspect and
held him in pretrial solitary confinement for nine months. But
the Taiwanese-born scientist ultimately pleaded guilty in
September to a single felony count of mishandling classified
information.
Provisions of the espionage act make the willful mishandling of
classified defense information a felony punishable by up to 10
years in prison. Taking classified information home without
authorization is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in
prison.
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