WASHINGTON — A former top State Department official pleaded guilty Monday to possessing classified information and concealing an improper relationship with a Taiwanese intelligence officer, but authorities stopped short of alleging that he was guilty of espionage.
Donald W. Keyser, the former No. 2 official in the department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing classified U.S. documents from the State Department and making false official statements.
In court documents released Monday by the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., authorities disclosed that Keyser, 62, had removed thousands of documents from the department from 1992 until his arrest in 2004, including documents classified as top secret and some classified at an even higher level, containing what is known as secure compartmented information.
"Numerous additional classified documents were found on a laptop computer and on floppy disks in Keyser's home," the plea agreement says. "In all, Keyser had over 3,600 documents in either hard copy or electronic form."
The court papers do not say whether Keyser had given any documents to foreign officials.
Keyser is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 24; he faces a maximum of eight years in prison and $500,000 in fines. He is also disqualified from holding a government post, the documents say.
Authorities arrested Keyser on Sept. 15, 2004, after he met with a Taiwanese intelligence officer, Isabelle Cheng, and a second official from Taiwan's national intelligence agency, at a suburban Washington restaurant, according to U.S. officials, court records and news reports.
State Department officials and Keyser's lawyers could not be reached for comment late Monday. The Justice Department disclosed the plea agreement shortly before 7 p.m.
Keyser, who worked 33 years at the State Department before retiring last year, has not commented in detail on the case or on the specifics of his relationship with Cheng, 34.
But federal authorities said in the lengthy plea agreement and supporting court papers that Keyser had admitted to having an undisclosed personal relationship with Cheng that could have made him "vulnerable to coercion, exploitation or pressure from a foreign government."
"Those who are trusted to handle classified documents must not allow such material to be compromised in any way," said Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
