US: US federal authorities have confirmed that they have launched a full-scale espionage investigation into whether a former US marine was acting as a spy for Philippine government officials while working in the White House and, more recently, for the FBI.
Leandro Aragoncillo, an FBI intelligence analyst who had worked in Vice-President Dick Cheney's office before retiring from the Marine Corps last year, was arrested last month and charged in a criminal complaint in New Jersey with knowingly acting as an agent of a foreign government.
Mr Aragoncillo, a naturalised citizen from the Philippines, and Michael Ray Aquino, a former senior official with the Philippine National Police, were also accused of transmitting classified information from a computer in New Jersey to a public official in the Philippines.
Mr Aragoncillo (47) is believed to have given the classified information to opposition party politicians in the Philippines - including politically damaging and embarrassing "dirt" on at least one former president - with the help of Mr Aquino, who was living in the United States at the time, according to the complaint and federal authorities.
Joseph Estrada, the former Philippine president, has acknowledged in a television interview in the Philippines that Mr Aragoncillo gave him documents at a personal meeting.
Mr Estrada also told a Philippine newspaper that he was not aware of any illegal activity by the suspect.
US officials cautioned that the initial stages of the investigation have turned up no "mind-blowing, Robert Hanssen-like breaches of national security", in the words of one federal law enforcement official, referring to the former FBI agent convicted of being a double agent for the Soviet Union.