U.S. v. Kampiles
| Decision Date | 15 November 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 78-2646,78-2646 |
| Parties | 5 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 922 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William Peter KAMPILES, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Michael D. Monico, Marvin Bloom, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellant.
David T. Ready, U. S. Atty., South Bend, Ind., George G. Matava, David R. Homer, (on the brief), Dept. of Justice, Internal Security Sec., Criminal Div., Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before CUMMINGS, PELL and TONE, Circuit Judges.
In August 1978, a six-count indictment was returned against defendant. Count I charged him with delivering the cover page, table of contents and section 1 of Copy No. 155 of a 1976 "KH-11 System Technical Manual" to a representative of the Soviet Union in Athens, Greece, on February 23, 1978, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 794(a). 1 Count II charged him with delivering sections 2 through 8 of that document to a Soviet representative in Athens on March 2, 1978, in violation of the same provision.
Count III charged defendant with having unauthorized possession of the cover page, table of contents and section 1 of said document relating to the national defense and willfully delivering it to a person not entitled to receive it, again in Athens on February 23, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e). 2 Count IV charged him with the same kind of violation on March 2 with respect to sections 2 through 8 of that document.
Count V charged defendant with the unauthorized sale of the title page, table of contents and section 1 of the document on February 23 in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 641. 3 Count VI charged him with the same type of offense on March 2 with respect to sections 2 through 8 of the document.
At his arraignment, defendant pled not guilty to the indictment. However, after an eight-day jury trial in which he testified on his own behalf, he was convicted on all counts. He was sentenced to concurrent 40-year terms of imprisonment on Counts I and II and concurrent ten-year terms on Counts III through VI to run concurrently with the sentence under Count I. We affirm.
The charges in this case stem from four meetings that defendant William Kampiles had with Michael Zavali, 4 a Soviet intelligence agent, in Athens, Greece, in February and March 1978. The defendant maintained at trial that during these meetings he "played a game" with Zavali, successfully persuading the Soviet agent through his conversation and the passing of harmless material that he worked for our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and would be interested in working as a double agent. The Government alleged, and the jury apparently agreed, that Kampiles succeeded in gaining the trust of the Soviet agent only by passing to Zavali Copy 155 of the KH-11 System Technical Manual, which involves top secret material concerning United States satellite photography programs.
Central to the Government's case was a confession given by Kampiles during interviews in August 1978 with representatives of the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In his confession, Kampiles admitted receiving $3,000 from Zavali in return for the KH-11 manual. On appeal, defendant emphasizes the importance of the confession to the Government's case and urges that the evidence was insufficient to find him guilty because an accused may not be convicted upon his uncorroborated confession. Smith v. United States,348 U.S. 147, 152-153, 75 S.Ct. 194, 99 L.Ed. 192. The Supreme Court has ruled, however, that "the corroborative evidence need not be sufficient, independent of the statements (here the confession), to establish the Corpus delicti." Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 93, 75 S.Ct. 158, 164, 99 L.Ed. 101. The corroboration is adequate if it "supports the essential facts admitted sufficiently to justify a jury inference of their truth." Under these principles, defendant's argument has little force since the question primarily at issue here is not whether the meetings in fact took place, but rather what transpired at those meetings. As is clear from the Opper case itself, no independent evidence of the specific events transpiring at those meetings is necessary for the conviction to stand. Nevertheless, we shall review the evidence in this case in order to illuminate this issue and other issues presented on appeal.
It is undisputed that defendant had been employed by the CIA from March 1977 to November 1977. The meetings in question occurred during a vacation taken by defendant in Greece shortly after his resignation from the CIA. Apart from his confession, Kampiles himself provided two accounts of the circumstances surrounding his encounters with Zavali and the events occurring at the meetings, accounts he also endorsed at trial. The first of these accounts appears in a letter defendant wrote in late May or early June 1978 to George Joannides, a more senior employee whom Kampiles knew at the CIA, describing his encounters with Zavali. In the letter, which was received in evidence at trial, defendant told Joannides that in late February 1978 he had unwittingly entered a party at the Soviet Embassy in Athens and had met an individual describing himself as "Michael." Kampiles said he told Michael he was an employee of our government. According to the letter, Kampiles convinced Michael at later meetings that he still worked for the CIA and, in response to Michael's promise of "a great deal of money," that he would be willing to bring sensitive documents to the Russian. Michael told defendant the information he wanted and they discussed using a camera for obtaining it. Kampiles also wrote that before he left Greece he and Michael set another meeting for the latter part of August 1978, and Michael gave defendant his name and address, which defendant enclosed with the letter to Joannides. The enclosure showed the Russian's name as Mr. Z. Michalis, with an Athens address.
Joannides testified that he turned this letter and enclosure over to the Soviet section of the CIA and at the request of that agency telephoned defendant to come to Washington, D.C., at CIA expense for an August 14 interview. At that interview, during which Kampiles was questioned by two employees of the CIA and two FBI agents, the defendant provided a second expanded version of the meetings with Zavali. Defendant told the agents that he knew that Michael was a Soviet intelligence officer and had met him four times. Defendant also said he told Michael he would work for the Soviets by furnishing information to him for $10,000 plus expenses per each trip to Greece. He gave the Soviet agent an identification card he had obtained while employed by the CIA. At his final meeting with Michael, the Soviet agent gave defendant $3,000 "for general expenses" and stated that his superiors had approved defendant's financial request for future trips, which were to occur twice a year. According to Kampiles' statements during the interview, Michael asked defendant to obtain top secret information about long- and short-range missiles, the B-1 bomber, cruise missiles and the identities of CIA agents abroad, and advised Kampiles to purchase a 35 mm. camera to photograph the relevant documents. Michael gave defendant an accommodation address through which Kampiles could advise Michael of impending trips to Greece, and the two agreed upon a signal site 5 and a place to meet upon Kampiles' arrival in Greece.
Defendant told the four persons interviewing him that he returned to the United States on March 5, the day after his last meeting with Michael, and deposited the $3,000 in a savings account. He said he contacted Michael through the accommodation address in August 1978, telling Michael he would be traveling to Greece during that month. He said he intended to tell Michael that he had been undergoing training for a new position at the CIA and that he had only limited access to documents of interest to the Soviets.
Other evidence at trial showed that toward the end of the interview, one of the FBI agents insisted that defendant must have given Michael a document in return for the $3,000, but defendant declined to change his story. This same agent then offered Kampiles an opportunity to be re-interviewed the following day, an offer defendant accepted. 6 On August 15, defendant was interviewed by a third FBI agent, James Murphy. During this interview, when Murphy insisted that Kampiles tell the truth, Kampiles admitted to Murphy that he had sold the KH-11 manual mentioned in the indictment to the Soviet agent in Athens. He subsequently made the same admissions to the FBI agents who had interviewed him the previous day and ultimately gave a complete confession.
Since defense counsel does not challenge the contents of the confession, which was admitted in evidence, there is no need to recount its details here except to state that it fully supports the six counts of the indictment. In addition to defendant's own account of the Athens meetings, the independent evidence adduced at trial to corroborate the confession is clearly sufficient to satisfy the Opper rule. The Government showed that defendant began work for the CIA in March 1977 as a watch officer in that agency's Operations Center Watch Office in Langley, Virginia. A watch officer's duties were to monitor and digest incoming reports from around the world. Prosecution testimony established that Copy 155 of the KH-11 manual, then and now classified as "Top Secret," was in a file near defendant's work station and was available for his use. The manual describes the KH-11 satellite system of advanced photography for gathering intelligence on areas of interest to this country's national defense. According to a government witness, a search of the CIA Watch Office after defendant confessed to its sale to...
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