Free Republic

NEWARK, Sept. 12 - A Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence analyst and a former top Philippines law enforcement official were charged in federal court on Monday with espionage. Arrested were the F.B.I. analyst, Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, of Woodbury, N.J., a naturalized United States citizen who was born in the Philippines, and Michael Ray Aquino, 39, of Queens, a former deputy director of the Philippines National Police under the government of the former president Joseph Estrada. The two men are accused of passing classified agency information to government officials in Manila in a case that appeared related to the Philippines' fractious...

Ousted President Joseph Estrada said Tuesday he was notified by an American court that US authorities bugged his telephone conversations with a former FBI analyst who was charged with illegally revealing US government secrets. Estrada has previously acknowledged receiving American government assessments of Philippine political events from Leandro Aragoncillo, who has been accused of illegally downloading confidential US information and passing them to other people while working as an FBI intelligence analyst. Estrada told The Associated Press that he received a notice from a New Jersey court, which informed him that some of his telephone conversations with Aragoncillo were...