A French national who became ensnared in a sensational cocaine investigation in South Carolina said in an interview with Main Justice that federal authorities wrongly suspected him of spying.
Pascal Etcheber, 47, spent six months in jail while facing charges for lying to the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement about his knowledge of drug use in Charleston involving former South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, whose June 2007 indictment on federal cocaine charges dominated newspaper headlines in the state.
A globetrotting management consultant and author, Etcheber’s Wikipedia page says he believes “human beings can never find fulfillment because Freedom is lost by the obedience to laws.” In May, he pleaded guilty in federal court in Charleston to one count of marijuana possession and was sentenced to three years’ probation and a $1,000 fine.
Etcheber returned to France, but told Main Justice by telephone that he was recently barred from re-entering the United States to visit his young daughter who lives there. He said it was mistake, which he expects U.S. authorities to correct.
FBI Special Agent David Espie, who worked on the Ravenel case, became convinced along the way that he was a spy, Etcheber said.
“He spent three years chasing me, inventing coincidences,” said Etcheber, who denied he is a French secret agent.
Espie retired from the FBI last year. Main Justice was unable to reach him at telephone number listed as his residence. Thomas O’Neill, chief division counsel for the FBI in Columbia, S.C., declined to comment.
Pascal Etcheber (Provided)
Etcheber’s case underlined several issues about defendants’ rights.
The French national testified in a federal court hearing that agents tricked him in 2007 into speaking with them, violating Miranda rights he said he didn’t know he possessed. Moreover, the interview wasn’t recorded, with agents relying on handwritten notes that a federal judge described as “skimpy” to charge Etcheber with lying. And Etcheber has never been allowed to review a sealed court file in which the national security concerns about him were described.
Etcheber lived in Charleston off and on from 2004 to 2010, moving in elite circles when he wasn’t crisscrossing globe as a management consultant. One of his acquaintances was Ravenel, the onetime state official and son of former South Carolina U.S. Rep. Arthur Ravenel (R).
It was big news in Charleston when Ravenel was arrested in 2007 and quickly resigned as treasurer. In March 2008, Ravenel was sentenced to 10 months in prison on federal cocaine charges. By that time, federal agents already had Etcheber in their sights.
An ICE agent named Brian Sherota had asked Etcheber in the fall of 2007 to come to his office to discuss an immigration issue, according to testimony last year from Etcheber and government agents before U.S. District Judge Joseph Anderson in Charleston. Etcheber said he was surprised to be greeted by Espie and another FBI agent along with Sherota. The French national said in court the agents ambushed him with questions about cocaine use in Charleston and whether he secretly worked for French intelligence.
“I was very surprised by this spying accusation, and I really felt they were ridiculous, to be honest,” Etcheber said, according to a transcript. “But I was concerned because I have a daughter in the U.S., and I was concerned that these people have the power over me, that they could ask me to leave the country and never come back and I [would] lose my daughter. I’m already in a custody fight for my daughter.”
Etcheber said in court that he thought throughout the 2007 interview that Espie was with the National Security Agency, not the FBI. Espie testified that he’d only mentioned to Etcheber that he’d once worked at the NSA.
Then, instead of recording the interview, the agents took hand-written notes that formed the basis of a 302 report summary of Etcheber’s statements. A federal judge described the notes as “very cryptic … very skimpy, not full sentences by any means” and, in part because of their vagueness, found the notes did not contradict the 302 statements summaries that had been used to charge Etcheber. The Justice Department has been reviewing whether to change the FBI policy of not recording interviews.
Espie said at the court hearing last year that while he did not read Etcheber his Miranda rights, the Frenchman was advised that his cooperation was voluntary. But Etcheber testified he didn’t have that impression.
“I could not believe that I could just say, ‘Wait a minute, Mr. NSA, Mr. FBI, Mr. ICE, I’m not happy here, let’s cancel all this,” Etcheber said in court. He added that the agents made copies of his passport and asked why he traveled to places like Taiwan and Jerusalem.
The French national was initially charged with lying to federal agents during the 2007 interview. Later he faced additional charges, including lying to a federal judge, intimidating a witness, drug distribution and marijuana possession.
He pleaded guilty to marijuana possession in May in exchange for the dismissal of the other charges. Etcheber has since told Main Justice that he did not smoke marijuana but rather a cook at a party he held at his house several years ago used the drug without his consent or prior knowledge.
But Etcheber never faced a charge relating to national security matters. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Moore, who led the prosecution, said in court in February that national security issues involving Etcheber were not related to the charges in the case.
“There’s other information about Mr. Etcheber and national security that has been developed … but I’m not at liberty to talk about it in open court,” Moore said in court in February, according to a transcript.
Moore told Main Justice he could neither confirm nor deny any past or present investigation into espionage allegations against the French national.
Transcripts from the court hearings are embedded below.
A former Federal Bureau of Investigation research specialist who says he was fired after coming under false suspicion in an espionage-related investigation of a pro-Israel group has sued to clear his name.
The plaintiff, who filed as John Doe in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says in the Jan. 7 complaint he was fired in 2008 in connection with the probe of two American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman.
The former analyst says he believes he was targeted because he’d faxed unclassified Foreign Broadcast Information Service documents to AIPAC, although he said in the complaint he wasn’t given a reason for his termination beyond unspecified security concerns.
The government in May dropped espionage charges against the AIPAC lobbyists, after an appeals court ruled the defense could use classified information at trial. The U.S. also faced an uphill battle in complying with a lower court order to prove the AIPAC lobbyists had intended to harm U.S. interests when they disclosed Pentagon information about Iraq to the media and an Israeli diplomat.
The former FBI analyst who got caught up in the affair also alleges the Bureau targeted him because of his Jewish faith, and that his First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated when he was fired and stripped of his security clearance without due process. He seeks at least $201,000 in damages, reinstatement to his job, and the right to a “name-clearing hearing,” among other redress.
The plaintiff worked on Capitol Hill for two House members and a U.S. senator, then as a Department of State intelligence research specialist from 1999 to 2003, the complaint says. He was on contract with the Department of Homeland Security before starting with the FBI in 2004, the complaint says. He specialized in Palestinian terrorist front groups in the U.S. and terrorist financing.
The FBI placed him on unpaid administrative leave on Oct. 29, 2005 and terminated him in 2008. He had held a security clearance at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level, the complaint says. He is represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Mark Zaid.
Mary Jacoby contributed to this report, which was corrected to reflect that the former FBI researcher’s complaint says the Bureau did not give a reason for his termination.
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The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus has an interesting piece today about what defense lawyers for accused spies Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman would have unleashed at trial if prosecutors hadn’t dropped their case.
Pincus cites a March 27 letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. from defense attorneys Abbe Lowell, John N. Nassikas III and Baruch Weiss asking the government to dismiss the charges against the former American Israel Public Affairs Committee officials. According to Pincus, the letter made these points:
- “It was ‘ironic’ that to prove ‘the sanctity of alleged national defense information, the prosecution will risk the disclosure of classified documents . . . the defendants never saw.’”
- Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department Iran expert who became a cooperating witness, wore a wire when he met with Weissman and ”induced him into believing that he had to communicate certain information right away in order to save innocent lives.”
- Two government officials who prosecutors said passed classified information to the defendants “have told both us and/or government investigators, that they were authorized to speak with our clients and knew full well (and even intended) that our clients pass the information on to others,” the defense lawyers wrote.
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Another huge, embarrassing failure for the government. The decision today to drop espionage charges against former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman was an admission by the U.S. that it couldn’t win. Read the government’s motion here.
An appeals court decision had allowed the defense to use classified information at trial, and the U.S. didn’t want to go there. Equally difficult: A lower court had ordered the government to prove the lobbyists had intended to harm U.S. interests when they disclosed Pentagon information about Iraq to the media and an Israeli diplomat.
A trial had been scheduled for June 2 before Judge Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. Likely witnesses would have included former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Read the Washington Post story here, the New York Times story here. Read a Washington Jewish Week profile here of Weissman’s defense attorney Baruch Weiss, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York now with Arent Fox LLP in Washington.
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