Nation in brief

Former FBI agent pleads in spy case

LOS ANGELES - One year after his arrest raised the specter of a damaging espionage scandal, a former FBI supervisor here pleaded guilty Wednesday to a far less significant offense: failing to disclose his 20-year sexual relationship with an accused Chinese double agent.

In a 20-minute appearance before U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, former agent James J. Smith acknowledged that he had lied to the FBI in August 2000 when he said in a routine interview that there was nothing in his personal life that would affect his ability to work in counterintelligence, or that could compromise his judgment.

Later, FBI officials would allege, Smith had not only carried on an affair with his longtime informant, Katrina Leung, but was so careless with classified documents that Leung had surreptitiously viewed and copied the documents - at great risk to the United States.

Smith's plea bargain, the product of long negotiations between his attorneys and the U.S. attorney's office, calls for him to cooperate in the prosecution of Leung on five counts of illegally possessing national security papers. In exchange, authorities agreed to drop one count of mail fraud and two counts of gross negligence in handling classified documents. Sentencing was set for January 2005.

His offense carries a potential prison term of five years, although the effect of the plea agreement is that Smith, 60, will almost certainly serve little or no time behind bars.

"This agreement confirms what we have said all along: that he did not do anything to put the national security at risk," Smith's attorney, Brian A. Sun, said after the hearing at the Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles.

Smith, who was joined in court by his wife and adult son, declined to comment. But his attorney said Smith was grateful for the chance to put the possibility of a trial behind him. "He's going to move on with his life," Sun said. "He's paid a substantial price already."

HOUSTON - Just as he bravely escaped his captors in Iraq, Thomas Hamill found the inspiration and strength to throw the first pitch of the Astros game Wednesday against the Florida Marlins.

Stoically raising his right forearm, still heavily bandaged with a cast and healing from a bullet wound, Hamill proudly waved to the crowd then lobbed a one-hop pitch to home plate that anyone would be proud to have thrown.

"It would be difficult at best to imagine being here today without . . . prayers and never-ending support and generosity," said Hamill, the Halliburton contract worker who escaped his Iraqi captors earlier this month.

Hamill, 44, a former Mississippi dairy farmer, left his family to work for Halliburton as a truck driver in Iraq. He was wounded and captured when his convoy was ambushed April 9. After a 23-day ordeal, on May 2, he escaped from a farmhouse about 50 miles from Baghdad.

In town to meet Halliburton employees, Hamill was asked by the Astros to throw the first pitch. He thanked his fellow employees and Americans for their thoughts and prayers and said people here should continue to remember Americans still in Iraq. Some of the workers in Hamill's convoy are still missing.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A judge declared a Chinese immigrant couple unfit to raise their 5-year-old daughter, leaving her in the custody of the American foster family that has raised the child since shortly after her birth.

Judge Robert Childers issued an order Wednesday that terminates the parental rights of Shaoqiang and Qin Luo He, who have tried for four years to win back the daughter they put in foster care because of financial hardships.

The judge said it was in the child's best interest to stay with Jerry and Louise Baker, the family she has come to regard as her own.

The court found that the Hes willfully abandoned and provided no support for their daughter, Anna Mae, from Jan. 29 to June 20, 2001. Childers also ruled that the Hes sought custody only to prevent their deportation.

"The court concludes, by clear and convincing evidence, that there is parental misconduct or inability to parent by the Hes," the ruling said.

When the trial wrapped up last month, Childers said he would consider what was better for the child - leaving her with the Bakers in their middle-class suburban home or reuniting her with the parents who plan to return to China.

The trial drew attention from Chinese-Americans and Chinese citizens across the United States. The Chinese Embassy in Washington sent representatives to pretrial hearings and wrote to the Tennessee courts seeking assurance the Hes would be treated fairly.

The Hes were in a Memphis hotel room when they heard the ruling. The mother was holding her two other children, crying uncontrollably and watching the Bakers hold a news conference on television.

DENVER - A clergy-abuse victims group called Wednesday for U.S. Catholic bishops to open portions of their private prayer retreat in Denver next month, another salvo in a widening dispute over the bishops' commitment to reforms after an abuse scandal.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also criticized Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput and his assistant, Bishop Jose Gomez, for a letter they wrote questioning claims brought by a lay Catholic panel probing the scandal.

A spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday that final details of the Denver retreat are not complete, but the plan calls for an entirely closed-door meeting.

In a confidential letter made public this week, the lay review board accused U.S. bishops of manipulation and potential "backsliding" on reforms adopted two years ago to protect young people.

The group, chaired by Illinois Appellate Court Justice Anne Burke, was angered that some bishops have questioned staging a second annual review of whether U.S. dioceses are meeting the tough new standards.

BOSTON - Conservative groups and some state lawmakers pleaded with a federal judge Wednesday in an 11th-hour bid to stop the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages from taking place next week in Massachusetts.

Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, argued the state's high court stepped outside its jurisdiction when it ruled in November that gay marriage should be legal in Massachusetts.

"It's an unusual time that we live in, and we're asking this court to intervene to prevent this constitutional train wreck," Staver told U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro.

Assistant Massachusetts Attorney General Peter Sacks, arguing on behalf of the Supreme Judicial Court, said the state court based its ruling on an interpretation of the state constitution, and the case does not belong in federal court.

"These are pure questions of state law," Sacks said. "There is no jurisdictional basis for this court to intervene or second-guess the SJC's ruling on a core matter of state law."

The judge said he would issue a decision this afternoon or Friday morning. Both sides said they will appeal if necessary.

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