United States Government Employees

Snooping abroad for clues to illicit plots is one of the CIA's primary missions, but the agency disclosed Friday that it had discovered a criminal operation embarrassingly close to home. Joseph P. Romello, 41, an upper-management CIA veteran of 12 years, pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he conspired to defraud the agency and the U.S. government of about $1.2 million, the Justice Department and the CIA announced. Acting on an anonymous tip to CIA Inspector General Frederick P.

Sparked by heightened security concerns since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Defense Department has begun laying the groundwork to ban non-U.S. citizens from a wide range of computer projects.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a single false statement to a federal agent, including a simple "no" to an accusation, can be punished as a crime. The justices refused to make an exception for a person who, when confronted by a tax agent or federal investigator, denies he has done anything wrong.

Ana Belen Montes, a senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Department, appeared before a federal magistrate for the first time, charged with giving classified defense information to Cuba. Judge Deborah Robinson granted a 30-day extension requested by both the state and the defense before the case is brought to court. Montes, 44, who is being held without bail, faces a possible death penalty if convicted.

As he drives through South Los Angeles on an overcast afternoon, Special Agent John Pi of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is having trouble--as usual--making up his mind. Pi, who in sunglasses looks far younger than 36, has an organized-crime case to work. But the call over a bureau radio is clear: The SWAT team is about to enter a house where it believes kidnappers are keeping a 3-year-old taken from a San Marino family two weeks earlier. The address is only five minutes away.

By 2 p.m. Tuesday, security officer Nick McGahuey felt like he had been summoned to keep the peace in a ghost town. The Chet Holifield Federal Building on Avila Road here, known to locals as the Ziggurat building, was eerily deserted. Looking for tax advice at the Internal Revenue Service? "Outta luck," as McGahuey put it. "The doors are locked up tighter than a drum." Those hoping for help in obtaining Social Security checks would find three employees out of 21 on duty at a solitary window.

Donald Rochon took a $7,000 pay cut when he left the Los Angeles Police Department in 1981 to fulfill a dream: joining what he considered to be the nation's premier law enforcement agency, the FBI. The only son of a white contractor and a black housewife, Rochon had grown up surfing and socializing almost exclusively with white friends on Los Angeles beaches. But after three years with the FBI in Chicago and Omaha, he found himself in the midst of a racial nightmare.

The FBI announced Saturday that a veteran agent in its New York office, who served as director of a suburban soccer program for youngsters in his spare time, had been arrested on charges of child molestation. A complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn charged Richard M. Taus, a 10-year bureau veteran, with transporting a minor in interstate commerce for the purpose of prostitution, threatening a witness and misusing government property.

Expressing frustration over the federal government shutdown and the strain on furloughed workers, about 100 government employees Tuesday staged a "work-in" at a Baltimore Social Security Administration office. Chanting slogans--"Congress, we want to work!"--the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1923 reversed the normal bargaining practice of withholding labor by urging its members to report to their jobs.

In a dramatic attempt to put a major controversy behind him, embattled Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. Dan Quayle told the Veterans of Foreign Wars Monday night that "absolutely no influence" was used to get him into the Indiana National Guard in 1969 as the Vietnam War was raging. "My unit had vacancies before I applied, when I applied and after I applied. There was no influence whatsoever," Quayle said. "You more than any other group of Americans need to know the facts."

A federal judge has ordered Lewis Allen Rivlin, a former Justice Department attorney, to pay about $6.5 million for defrauding investors, including an Ecuadorean charity for underprivileged girls. Ruling in a civil case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1999, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Thursday that Rivlin violated federal securities laws in 1997-98 by selling $6.2 million worth of phony securities to four groups of investors.

The U.S. military on Wednesday rejected a South Korean court order for one of its American civilian employees to stand trial on charges of dumping toxic chemicals into a river. A bailiff from the Seoul District Court visited the military headquarters in the capital to deliver the court summons for Albert McFarland, a 58-year-old civilian mortuary employee of the U.S. command. The U.S.

A key House panel overturned President Bush's proposal to eliminate contraceptive coverage for federal employees, virtually ensuring that the benefit provided to 1.2 million women in the government work force since 1998 will remain.

A former Immigration and Naturalization Service official was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,400 for accepting bribes from two men who were previously found innocent of the charges. Angel Orduno, 51, pleaded guilty and cooperated in the prosecution of two former Fresno men on charges that they bribed him in exchange for expediting a series of U.S. citizenship applications. However, last month a federal jury acquitted Jamal Bibi, 43, and Jassim Mohammad Addal, 35.

The best thing that ever happened to Ian Thomas was losing his government job. Thomas was a contract employee for the U.S. Geological Survey when earlier this spring he posted a map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's caribou calving areas on a federal Web site. His bosses, for reasons still in dispute, fired him. But thanks to the Internet and a feature role in the "Doonesbury" comic strip this week, Thomas has become a cult hero.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged newspaper publishers Friday to tell the story of U.S. diplomats and the work they do so Americans will support a foreign policy that "has us engaged" in the world. Powell said that one of his major missions will be to fight for better salaries, more secure embassies and more recognition for the men and women who work for the State Department.

Penthouse magazine says it will pay former White House secretary Fawn Hall $500,000 to pose nude. Playboy magazine wants her for a "celebrity pictorial." Her friends say she is also receiving television, film and modeling offers. So far, they say, she is not interested. "She thought the (Penthouse) offer was disgusting," said F. Andrew Messing Jr., a conservative activist and friend of Hall's. Hall, former secretary to fired National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver L.

A retired Army intelligence analyst was charged Tuesday with selling the Soviet KGB top secret documents from 1988 to 1991, including sites targeted for tactical nuclear attack if the former Soviet Union struck the United States first. David Sheldon Boone, 46, who was assigned to the National Security Agency, allegedly walked into the Soviet embassy here and volunteered his services to Moscow, delivering his first classified document for $300.

A spy dispute between Russia and the United States played out Friday, with officials here moving to eject four American diplomats and pledging to oust more later to replicate steps taken this week by Washington. Afterward, U.S. officials said they considered the matter closed, signaling that they did not anticipate a second round of expulsions. And senior officials of both countries said relations on other issues need not suffer. Secretary of State Colin L.

Last week, Ian Thomas posted a map on a U.S. government Web site of the caribou calving areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area the Bush administration wants to open up for oil exploration. This week, Thomas is looking for a new job. "I'm really flabbergasted," Thomas said Wednesday. "After putting out 20,000 maps with no problem and then putting out one where baby caribou like to hang out, I got fired." Thomas, a contract employee for the U.S.