Washington, July 21: A U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in documents made public Monday that Central Intelligence Agency officials committed fraud attempting to cover for the CIA’s former station chief in Burma in a wiretapping lawsuit.
The ruling was reported by the Associated Press on Monday afternoon, although the ruling was issued in recent months. The case’s result had been sealed from public eyes at the government’s request.
“According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred one CIA attorney for disciplinary action,” the wire service reported. “The judge also is considering sanctions against five other current and former CIA employees, including former CIA Director George Tenet.”
The suit alleged that Horn, his family and other DEA operatives were illegally wiretapped by intelligence agencies.
Tenet sought to have the suit — filed by former Drug Enforcement Agency operative Richard Horn against Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma — dismissed in 2000. Tenet said in an affidavit that Brown was a covert agent and immune to the suit.
The judge “granted the CIA’s request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004,” AP reported.
“Lamberth agreed and dismissed the suit […],” The Washington Post reported Monday evening. “Three years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned Lamberth, ruling that Horn could try to prove his case against Huddle by using unclassified information. The court upheld Lamberth’s decision to remove the CIA operative from the suit.”
The paper continued: “Early last year the Justice Department informed Lamberth that the CIA operative’s cover had actually been lifted in 2002 but nobody told the judge or the appeals court about the change. A CIA lawyer learned about it in 2005 but did not alert the Justice Department, Lamberth or the appeals court, Lamberth wrote.”
CIA attorney Jeffrey W. Yeates was named as the agency representative who committed what Lamberth called “fraud on the court.”
“Horn […] served in Burma in 1992 and 1993,” noted a Salon article from 1996. “To date Horn has refrained from giving interviews to the news media about his case. But one former DEA agent with 15 years of field experience in South America says he believes Horn’s claim is right. ‘I know it right to my soul that I was bugged,’ the agent, who asked to remain anonymous, said in a telephone interview. ‘I would say things intentionally on the phone to see if I was bugged, and it would come back to me from people in Central Intelligence. They were so brazen. Central Intelligence felt they could get away with murder and I’m sure they did.’
“CIA Public Affairs Officer Dave Christian, asked about Horn’s suit, said, ‘It’s not a part of the CIA’s mission to do anything like that [wiretap DEA agents in-country] and we don’t.'”
The Akha Heritage Foundation, a human rights group, has more on Horn’s case from a Nation magazine cover story.
–Agencies