The Nation - News from June 13, 1988

The Justice Department may bring criminal charges against nine CIA employees who found rare stamps in the agency’s supplies and sold them for thousands of dollars, the Washington Post reported. According to sources, the CIA completed an internal review of what stamp collectors call the discovery of “the CIA invert” and turned the case over to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. A Justice Department spokesman said the case is pending in the department’s public integrity section, which is debating whether the nine employees who replaced a sheet of 95 $1 stamps bearing an upside-down candlestick with a sheet without the error should be charged with theft or misappropriation of government supplies.