[ISN] FBI files sold to mob figures: Las Vegas analyst is charged with stealing secrets

From: William Knowles (wkat_private)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 23:23:20 PDT

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    http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2001/jun/19/511975065.html
    
    By Jeff German 
    <germanat_private>
    LAS VEGAS SUN
    June 19, 2001 
    
    A confidential informant has told the FBI that he sold investigative
    information obtained from a just-arrested Las Vegas FBI employee to
    organized crime members and other criminal targets.
    
    The employee, James J. Hill, a 51-year-old security analyst for the
    Las Vegas FBI, was taken into custody locally last week on a criminal
    complaint filed against him in New York. He faces a 3 p.m. Wednesday
    detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt.
    
    Hill was charged in the six-page complaint with obstruction of justice
    and stealing and selling the top-secret FBI information for cash.
    
    The informant, a New York private investigator, said he had paid Hill
    $25,000 for criminal files since November 1999.
    
    "The FBI and its many hard-working, dedicated employees should not be
    judged by the actions of one individual," Las Vegas FBI chief Grant
    Ashley said in a statement Monday. "The FBI is committed to the
    highest degree of professionalism, and any allegation of misconduct
    will be appropriately addressed."
    
    The New York complaint alleged that Hill, an Air Force veteran who has
    worked for the Las Vegas FBI for several years, had access to national
    security and electronic surveillance information as well as
    confidential informants and witnesses data stored in the FBI's
    nationwide computer system.
    
    "CI (confidential informant) admitted that the defendant has provided
    CI with classified FBI records pertaining to organized crime
    investigations, white collar crime investigations and investigations
    involving international alien smuggling, which CI sold to members of
    organized crime and other criminal targets," the complaint said.
    
    New York FBI agent Demetrius Barkoukis also suggested in the complaint
    that the confidential informant may have provided secret FBI
    information obtained from Hill to potential FBI targets in other
    countries.
    
    Barkoukis said the confidential informant's phone records showed that
    he had communications with people in Mexico and Cuba and that his
    passport listed recent visits to the drug cartel cities of Medillin
    and Bogata, Colombia.
    
    FBI agents learned of Hill's reported clandestine activities after
    they arrested the informant in Oyster Bay, N.Y., Thursday on charges
    of stealing and selling classified FBI information, the complaint
    said.
    
    When he was taken into custody, the complaint added, the informant was
    in possession of numerous FBI documents, and he later agreed to
    cooperate with agents.
    
    The informant told agents that he had recruited Hill in 1999 and that
    Hill had provided him with "hundreds of different classified FBI
    records and documents pertaining to criminal cases and grand jury
    investigations," the complaint said.
    
    The records obtained from Hill also were sold to attorneys and
    criminal defendants in New York, Long Island and elsewhere, the
    complaint said.
    
    Hill was arrested at 7:45 p.m on Friday as he left the FBI office in
    Las Vegas.
    
    "At the time of his arrest, Hill admitted that he had been accessing
    FBI records and documents relating to criminal investigations and
    providing them to CI for which he was paid by CI," the complaint said.
    
    Ashley said that as a precaution, the FBI was conducting a "national
    security damage assessment" as a result of Hill's arrest.
    
    FBI officials would not discuss who specifically wound up with the
    information allegedly provided by Hill.
    
    
     
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