Gave Friend Warning to Beat It : U.S. Attorney’s Office Secretary Guilty

A former secretary with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego pleaded guilty Thursday to warning a drug suspect that federal agents planned to search his home and arrest him.

Carol Haskell, who worked at the office in downtown San Diego from May, 1984, to January, 1986, pleaded guilty to leaking information to a drug suspect in late 1984, allowing him to clean out his home and flee. She faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. Atty. Peter Nunez said this was the first time an employee of the office in San Diego has been charged or convicted of leaking confidential information.

“This is very disappointing,” Nunez said. “This is one of the worst things we can imagine happening to our office.”

He said that no new measures are planned to keep employees from misusing confidential information. All employees, he noted, are subject to a rigorous background check by the FBI before being hired and are warned about leaking confidential information.

“I don’t know anything more we can do,” he said, “except to continually remind people of the rules. I just don’t know how to prevent this from happening.”

Haskell was accused of providing information to a defendant in a marijuana distribution case. The defendant had been indicted by a federal grand jury but not yet arrested or searched.

When Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrived at his home, he was gone and no evidence was found. The defendant, Mark Wheat, has since been arrested and convicted, Nunez said.

Nunez said Haskell admitted that she warned Wheat because the two were friends and that no money or bribe was involved. He said she left the office in 1986 to join a private law firm.

U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, who accepted Haskell’s plea, allowed her to remain free on bond pending sentencing.

Because attorneys in the office knew Haskell, the case was handled by a prosecutor from outside the office: James Wilson, a member of the general litigation section of the criminal division of the Department of Justice.