Ex-Sailor Sues Navy Officers Who Labeled Him a Spy

Eighteen months ago, the Navy branded Daniel King a spy and threw him in the brig. On Monday, the accused turned accuser.

In a remarkable about-face, the once-disgraced petty officer first class has emerged as Exhibit A in a debate about the potential abuses of military-style justice, as his defense lawyers began seeking courts-martial for the officers who helped end his military career.

King, originally suspected of spying for Moscow because of his inconclusive answers on a routine polygraph test, was interrogated for hundreds of hours over a span of 29 days in the fall of 1999. Finally, after a marathon 19-hour session, the decorated sailor confessed to spying.

But he later recanted, saying he was so worn down by the interrogation that he didn’t know fantasy from reality. Last month, a military hearing officer found that the case against King was so weak that it should be thrown out. After 520 days in the brig, King was a free man.

With the spy case dismissed, King’s lawyers late Monday filed misconduct charges with the Navy, accusing four officers of dereliction of duty and violating the military code of justice because of their alleged mistreatment of King.

‘One Big Nightmare’ He’s Hoping to End

At a time of heightened concern over espionage, the charges underscore the difficult balance in the military between protecting national security and protecting the rights of service members.

“This has all been one big nightmare. . . . I just want to make sure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to any other sailors,” said the 41-year-old King, a former code-breaker who now lives in a small Ohio town and works at his sister’s doughnut shop.

King’s military and civilian lawyers also initiated an ethics review against a Navy psychologist who interviewed King about his alleged espionage, but who they allege may not even have been licensed to practice.

Navy officials had no immediate comment on the allegations. But they defended their general handling of the case, denying that King’s confession was coerced.

“Espionage is one of the most difficult crimes to prosecute, particularly when prosecution would also potentially damage national security,” Navy officials said in a statement.

“Espionage cases often lack direct evidence and may be based solely on circumstantial evidence,” the statement continued. “However, when a sailor with access to the U.S. Navy’s most sensitive programs repeatedly states that he compromised the Navy’s most crucial secrets, the Navy has an obligation to investigate. The Navy did investigate King’s claims of wrongdoing, and did so properly and professionally.”

That claim is now drawing heavy scrutiny. A Senate panel held a closed-door hearing on the case earlier this month, and the Pentagon and the Navy have opened separate probes.

Navy’s Practices Under Microscope

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it is too early to say whether King was wrongfully accused.

What is clear, Shelby said in an interview, is that “the Navy was not competent to investigate and prosecute a case of this magnitude,” and that authorities failed to bring in FBI or Justice Department officials with the needed espionage-investigating experience.

“I guess the Navy thought they could handle it. Now we know they couldn’t,” he said.

King’s supporters say the case raises core questions about the way the military uses polygraphs to detect spies and whether it maintains proper safeguards to protect a service member’s right to defense counsel, a speedy trial and due process.

“You have a real problem here when an individual can spend well over a year incarcerated in a case in which there is really very little evidence,” said Kevin Barry, a retired military judge who helped write a brief on King’s behalf. “There are a lot of shortcomings in the military justice system, and a case like King’s has hit pretty hard on a few key ones.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, one of King’s lawyers, said the Navy’s justice system should be put on trial for running roughshod over a 20-year veteran’s rights. The Navy was driven by a “blind pursuit” of a villain, he says.

The King case, Turley maintains, fits “a long-standing pattern of abusive and unprofessional conduct” by the naval investigative service. He cited the Navy’s handling of the Tailhook sex scandal in the early 1990s and its probe into a fatal 1989 explosion aboard the battleship Iowa, which prompted the Navy to apologize to the family of a sailor who it initially suspected of blowing up the ship.

The Navy Times, in an editorial last month, said the King case “didn’t rock just one sailor’s faith in military justice. It poses a challenge to anyone’s faith in the system.”

The newspaper said King deserves an apology. But King said in an interview that he is happy just to be out of lockup.

The matter began in September 1999, when King underwent a routine polygraph test as part of a reassignment from Guam to Ft. Meade in Maryland, where he had previously worked as a cryptographer for the National Security Agency.

The Navy says King “did not pass” the test and effectively admitted to security violations. King’s lawyers deny the claim and say the results were simply inconclusive--a fairly common result.

The test set off a dogged investigation into whether King was a spy. By King’s account, he was soon taken into custody and interrogated for hours on end over the next 29 days.

Moving King from one “safe house” to another, interrogators told King he had “failed” the initial polygraph test, King and his lawyers said. Interrogators asked whether he had ever fantasized about spying for the Russians, and they repeatedly suggested that he had sent a computer disk to the Russians, which King denied, his lawyers say.

Sleep was rare. King’s interrogators would blare a television and keep the lights on through the night, he said. “They would wake me up and say, ‘What are you dreaming about?’ ” he recounted.

King said he admitted that he sometimes fantasized about being a spy or running off to the Black Sea with a Russian woman, but he insisted that these were simply fantasies. The investigators didn’t believe him.

“I started freaking out, really,” he said. “There was a period of time there that I didn’t know what was fantasy and what was reality.”

Videotape Shows Sailor’s Confusion

King’s confusion was apparent in an Oct. 19, 1999, interview with a naval psychologist. He asked to be hypnotized or given “truth serum” so he could remember things that his interrogators said he had done.

“The [computer] disk--did I give it?” King asked in a videotape of his interrogation filmed by the Navy and reviewed by The Times. “The thing about giving information to the Russians--I can’t remember a person’s face, I can’t remember anybody asking me a question, I can’t remember any of the specifics. I just remember bits and pieces of it, and then that’s when I get confused.”

King also said his interrogators warned that his family could be drawn into the probe. “I said, ‘I’ll agree to anything, just stay away from my family,’ ” he said.

And so on Oct. 6, 1999, at 3:30 a.m., after being interrogated for 30 of the previous 38 hours, King signed a confession saying he had given the Russians a computer disk containing secret intelligence, his lawyers say.

Defense attorneys point to research showing that innocent people can be pressured to confess to crimes they did not commit.

But military officials say it’s hard to believe a veteran sailor would falsely admit to espionage--knowing it could mean the death penalty.

And they dispute key details of the interrogations, saying King “was not coerced or intimidated in any way. . . . King took frequent breaks, usually every two hours. The interviews were reasonable, relaxed, and many were at the request of” King, Navy officials said. They also denied that King was refused an attorney.

The Navy maintains that undisclosed forensic evidence corroborated King’s confession. But after a five-month judicial review, a Navy hearing officer found on March 9 that the Navy’s case was “based exclusively on a confession that the accused subsequently contradicted on several occasions” and that may not have been voluntary.

“There is plenty [of blame] to go around” for what happened to King, Cmdr. James P. Winthrop wrote. The military’s responsibility now, he said, should be to ensure that “the mistakes committed will not be repeated.”