Ex-Official Admits Wrongdoing, Not Espionage

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.

Keyser initially denied having an improper relationship with Cheng, but later confirmed to State Department investigators and the FBI that the two had had “an undisclosed personal relationship” from 2002 to September 2004.

The court documents say Keyser communicated regularly with Cheng, met privately with her on numerous occasions and occasionally traveled with her, without ever reporting those contacts to the State Department as required.

Between Sept. 3 and Sept. 6, 2003, Keyser met Cheng in Taiwan and then lied about the trip to authorities, the plea agreement says.

Upon his return to the United States, he submitted a customs declaration form that falsely stated he had visited only China and Japan.

Almost a year later, the court papers say, Keyser told an investigator with the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security that he did not have a relationship with Cheng “when, in fact, he had.”

Keyser was commissioned as a foreign service officer in 1972 and specialized in East Asia. He became an expert on China for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, later served at U.S. embassies in Tokyo and Beijing, then returned to top management at the State Department in 1993.

In February 2003, Keyser was promoted to principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs. For much of that time, he held a top-secret security clearance, prosecutors said.

Court papers filed in the case detail how, in meetings in Washington, Keyser allegedly passed documents to Cheng and the other Taiwanese intelligence agent.

The papers do not say that Keyser took money, and they offer no motive for his actions. But they disclose that FBI agents found that during his unauthorized stay in Taipei, Keyser had made $570.01 in credit card purchases at a Christian Dior boutique.