Retired Engineer Gets 2 Years in Defense Espionage Case

A retired engineer who admitted to selling defense-related documents to an undercover agent posing as a French official has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.

John Douglas Charlton, 63, appearing before U.S. District Court Judge Harry L. Hupp, was also fined $50,000 on Monday for his guilty plea to two counts of attempted transfer of defense information. Charlton, a former employee at Lockheed and Bendix, was caught by the FBI trying to peddle classified information in the summer of 1993 to an agent masquerading as a representative of the French government.

Although Charlton faced a maximum 20-year prison term, prosecutors agreed to the reduced sentence as part of a plea agreement and after psychiatric tests concluded that the Lancaster resident suffered from a “schizoid personality--delusions of grandeur [and] some paranoia,” Assistant U.S. Atty. George B. Newhouse Jr. said.

“It did not excuse the misconduct, but it did, we believe, have enough of an influence that it mitigated his punishment,” Newhouse said.

Charlton’s defense lawyer, Donald C. Randolph, described his client as a tragic figure whose history of mental illness--the cause of a discharge from the U.S. Navy 40 years ago--was either overlooked or unknown to his employers.

“Now we understand how a man who was very patriotic and loved his country came to plead guilty to trying to sell classified information,” Randolph said.

An espionage indictment last year charged Charlton with meeting the undercover FBI agent five times in a two-month period, and exchanging documents for an expected total of more than $150,000.

At the time, Charlton contended he had only passed papers concerning his own unfunded scientific proposals, including plans for a chemical coating that he asserted would render submarines undetectable to enemy sonar. He said he gave the documents to the impostor French official hoping the man would then supply them to NATO.

Last October, however, Charlton pleaded guilty to the two counts of attempted defense espionage, admitting in court that he had tried to sell electrical blueprints for the Navy’s Captor Mine Program, an underwater weapons system he helped develop while working at Bendix.

“He wanted to make money from the sale of our national secrets,” Newhouse said. “This is a crime in our view that cries out for prison.”

His office also hopes Charlton’s sentence will deter others from pawning off classified information.

With credit for good behavior, Charlton, who has been free on bond, could be released after 22 months in prison but is not eligible for parole. The judge ordered him placed on five years’ probation upon his release.