Aragoncillo gets 10 years

WASHINGTON – Former US Marine and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analyst Leandro Aragoncillo was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for espionage and other charges for taking and transmitting classified information to opposition politicians in the Philippines in an attempt to destabilize and overthrow President Arroyo, the US Justice Department said.

Co-conspirator Michael Ray Aquino, a former Philippine National Police senior officer, was sentenced a day earlier to six years and four months in a US prison after pleading guilty to receiving secret documents from Aragoncillo containing national defense information as well as information on terrorist threats to US military personnel in the Philippines.

Aragoncillo, 48, a Filipino-American who worked at various times for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney pleaded guilty to espionage charges on May 4, 2006 and was sentenced on Wednesday by US District Judge William Walls at a federal court in Newark, New Jersey to 10 years in prison. He was also fined $40,000.

“Those charged with protecting the nation have a special responsibility to maintain their oath of loyalty to the United States,” said Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

“As a former US Marine and FBI analyst, Aragoncillo betrayed that oath, violated our espionage laws, and now must suffer the consequences of his actions,” he said.

“The sentencing of Leandro Aragoncillo brings to a close a harmful and disgraceful story of how a formerly trustworthy FBI employee and US Marine can turn into an enemy of the American people and the American way of life,” said FBI special agent in charge Weysan Dun.

A spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said that at a plea hearing last year Aragoncillo admitted regularly transferring to his Filipino contacts secret national security documents that could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.

He also admitted traveling to the Philippines in January 2001 to meet his co-conspirators, including a visit to Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the president of the Philippines.

Aragoncillo, a naturalized US citizen born in the Philippines and residing in New Jersey, was an FBI intelligence analyst at the time of his arrest in 2005.

The US court sentenced Aquino for his role in a plot to steal secret US documents in an effort to undermine the Arroyo administration.

Recipients of the secret US files included Lacson, former President Joseph Estrada and former House speaker Arnulfo Fuentebella, according to court documents.

Opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson said that Aquino is planning to seek political asylum in the United States after serving his jail term.

Aquino’s lawyers will are set to file an appeal to reduce the six-year jail term to about four years, which was part of the plea bargain agreement.

Lacson said Aquino fears for his life if he is deported to the Philippines after serving his term.

Aquino, who was also former deputy chief of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), fled to the United States with his wife, Fatima, and their son to avoid murder charges in 2001.

He studied nursing and passed the licensure examinations in the US.  After Aquino was jailed, his wife had taken odd jobs as a nanny to help provide for the needs of their young son, Lacson said.

Throughout Aquino’s ordeal, Lacson gave him and his family some “moral and financial support.”

“I continue to give him moral support and whenever I can, I approach some friends for financial support. We send (the money) to the US so that we can help his family,” Lacson added. 

At one time, Lacson recalled Aquino’s wife telling him that she worked as a nanny for actress Brooke Shields.

He said Aquino had also learned to preach the Bible while in detention and also converted some inmates to become Christians.  – With Christina Mendez