Leandro Aragoncillo

Who is Leandro Aragoncillo?

Leandro Aragoncillo is a former, FBI intelligence analyst, and a retired, United States Marine Corps, gunnery-sergeant who was convicted of spying against the United States Government in 2007. A naturalized Filipino-American, he was charged with espionage and with leaking classified information to the regime of a former Filipino president.

The FBI labeled Aragoncillo the first known case of espionage within the history of the White House. For over thirty-one months, from 1999 to 2001, Aragoncillo was assigned under Vice President Al Gore and then later under Vice President Dick Cheney.

Hired to work for the FBI at the Army's Ft. Monmouth base in New Jersey in July 2004, Aragoncillo began sending classified documents in January 2005, according to a federal complaint.

On October 5, 2005, Aragoncillo was indicted and arrested in New Jersey for espionage. Federal agents accused him of stealing classified information, including details about the current President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and then passing that information onto opposition leaders in the Philippines.

According to reports compiled by Filipino intelligence professionals, there were indications of a link between Aragoncillo and the French intelligence service, Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure. Frequent visits by Aragoncillo to Manila allegedly were interspersed with clandestine meetings between identified, French operatives and several "illegals" around 2002 to 2004.