[ISN] Child porn charge against DOD IPv6 director dropped

[InfoSec News]

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/40341-1.html

By Patience Wait
GCN Staff
04/06/06

(Updated) - Two weeks after a Defense Information Systems Agency 
official was arrested on a charge of child pornography, the U.S. 
Attorney's office handling the case dropped the charge. But a 
spokeswoman in the U.S. Attorney's Office said the investigation is 
continuing. 

"This is an ongoing investigation, so we don't have any comments," the 
spokeswoman said. 

Charles Lynch, director of DISA's IP version 6 transition program, was 
arrested March 8 and indicted in the U.S. District Court for the 
Eastern District of Virginia the next day on one count of possessing 
child pornography. 

According to a statement by the DOD Inspector General's Office, court 
documents alleged that Lynch had been operating a peer-to-peer 
file-sharing program on a computer in his office at DISA. Agents 
confiscated several computers and more than 1,000 CDs from Lynch's 
office. 

Lynch, 44, is on leave without pay from DISA. 

The investigation is being conducted by the Defense Criminal 
Investigative Service, the FBI and the DISA OIG. Joseph McMillan, 
special agent in charge of the DCIS Mid-Atlantic Field Office, would 
not elaborate on why the charge was dismissed. "It's our policy 
neither to deny nor confirm the existence of an ongoing criminal 
investigation," McMillan said. 

In apparently unrelated cases, a Homeland Security Department official 
was arrested earlier this week for soliciting sex with a minor. And 
last week, federal agents seized computer equipment from the desk of a 
NASA official, based on information developed during a U.S. Postal 
Inspection Service undercover investigation of Internet trafficking in 
child pornography. 

-=-

EDITOR'S NOTE: The original version of this story, posted April 6, 
reported Lynch's arrest and indictment, but did not report that the 
charge had been dismissed. The U.S. Attorney's Office, when contacted 
April 6 about the arrest, said only that the investigation is 
continuing, but not that the charge had been dismissed.