RCA Fined $2.5 Million for Defense Documents : Pentagon: The prosecutor says more firms will be charged for trying to gain an edge over their competitors by trafficking in confidential budget papers.

RCA Corp. on Monday pleaded guilty in federal court to trafficking in classified defense budget documents and agreed to pay a $2.5-million fine in the latest conviction in an ongoing probe into illegal trade in Pentagon papers.

One current and one former RCA employee also pleaded guilty to felony charges arising from their part in obtaining the confidential Pentagon documents.

The case is part of a six-year investigation dubbed Operation Uncover into how defense contractors trade secret Defense Department documents to gain advantage over competitors. “This is a continuing investigation,” said Henry E. Hudson, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, predicting that “other individuals and corporations” are likely to be charged soon.

Boeing Co. in November admitted similar crimes and paid more than $5 million in fines. A former Boeing executive, Richard Lee Fowler, was found guilty in December of 39 counts of conspiring to use classified military data to help his firm win Pentagon business.

General Electric Co., which acquired RCA in 1986 as a subsidiary, said in a statement, “This unfortunate chapter in RCA history is now closed.” GE said that all the activities covered in the case took place before it acquired RCA and said that it had “cooperated fully” in the government investigation.

General Electric, based in Fairfield, Conn., is the nation’s third-largest defense contractor, with contracts with the Pentagon worth $5.7 billion in the fiscal year ending in September, 1988, the last full year for which final figures are available.

While similar in nature, Operation Uncover is not related to the Ill Wind probe into corruption in Pentagon weapons-buying. More than 30 companies and individuals have been convicted or pleaded guilty to crimes in the Ill Wind probe, which focuses on bribery of Pentagon officials for inside information on military weapons procurement.

RCA and Boeing were convicted of trafficking in planning papers laying out in broad terms U.S. defense strategy and procurement policy, rather than individuals weapons contracts.

In court documents accompanying RCA’s plea agreement, the government said that from 1978 through 1985 RCA obtained copies of numerous internal Defense Department planning documents, including the Defense Guidance, the Five-Year Defense Plan and the Program Objective Memoranda of the military services.

Such reports generally are classified secret and closely held within the Pentagon. Some volumes of the Defense Guidance, which spells out American military strategy and future force structure plans, bear the warning “Not releasable to contractors/consultants.”

Prosecutors were vague as to exactly how RCA obtained the documents, saying only that three company officials had obtained them from representatives of other defense contractors.

Two of the RCA officials, Leonard C. Kampf and Ronald B. Stevens, pleaded guilty to “conveyance without authority” of government property worth more than $100. Both men face a maximum of 10 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Kampf, 69, was a manager of marketing information at RCA’s Government Systems Division in Cherry Hill, N.J., until his retirement in August, 1984. Stevens, 49, was a marketing manager at the firm’s Aerospace and Defense Division, also in Cherry Hill.

GE spokesman George Jamison said that Stevens has been suspended pending sentencing.

Michael J. Costello, a senior official of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which has been assisting in the government probe, said the RCA executives were involved in a “tightly knit group” of contractor officials who swapped bootleg Pentagon documents among themselves.

He said there may have been no more than a dozen individuals and companies involved in the conspiracy. While scores of valuable government planning documents were acquired from Pentagon sources and exchanged among the contractors, investigators have found no evidence that any money changed hands, Costello said.