Aug. 7, 2006
COMMENTARY: NY Newsday Ex-Publisher Guilty of Child Porn, Obstruction of
Justice
By Jim Kouri
Special to Huntington News Network
Former New York Newsday publisher Robert Johnson, 60, pleaded guilty on
Friday, Aug. 4, 2006 in Manhattan federal court to charges that he possessed
child pornography and destroyed computer records that were the subject of a
federal investigation. Johnson retired as CEO and publisher of Newsday
during the course of the federal investigation.
Johnson's plea is the product of “Operation Predator,” a law enforcement
initiative to protect children from pornographers, child prostitution rings,
Internet predators, alien smugglers, and human traffickers.
”Child pornography victimizes children over and over as the vile images are
spread and traded from predator to predator,” said one investigator.
According to the Indictment and Johnson's guilty plea, the former Chief
Executive Officer of New York Newsday, a leading newspaper headquartered in
New York City, knowingly possessed sexually explicit photographs of children
on a computer owned by the company. He had obtained the illegal images by
purchasing membership rights to websites that sold child pornography.
According to the Indictment and Johnson's statement in court, prior to May
3, 2004, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents learned that Robert
Johnson, using the internet aliases "robjob714" and "jobobo55," had
purchased memberships in websites believed to contain and distribute child
pornography and had done so through a computer that the agents traced to the
company.
On May 4, 2004, an ICE agent spoke to two executives at Newsday and informed
them that ICE was investigating usage of a computer to access Internet
websites believed to contain and distribute child pornography but did not
tell the executives that ICE was investigating Robert Johnson.
On May 4, 2004, one of the executives told Johnson that the company had
received an inquiry from federal authorities concerning use of a computer to
access Internet websites that contain and distribute child pornography.
According to the Indictment and Johnson's statement in court, on May 5 and
6, 2004, after learning about the federal investigation into the use of a
company computer to access child pornography, Johnson used a computer
program called "Evidence Eliminator" to destroy and obliterate more than
12,000 files from the hard disk drive of the desktop and laptop computers
assigned to him by the company.
In his plea allocution in court, Johnson acknowledged that he had possessed
at least two images of child pornography that he had downloaded from an
Internet website and he had used the “Evidence Eliminator” program to
destroy computer files from his desktop and laptop computers after he
learned of the federal investigation.
Johnson retired from the Company on May 17, 2004.
Johnson faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on the charge of possession of
child pornography and a maximum of 20 years in prison on the charge of
destruction of documents in connection with a federal investigation.
The latter charge was brought against Johnson as a result of a statute
enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Johnson is scheduled to
be sentenced in Manhattan federal court before United States District Judge
Richard Howell on October 27, 2006 at 12:00 noon.
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association
of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New Media Alliance
(thenma.org). He's former chief at a New York City housing project in
Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war
in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New
Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations.
Kouri has appeared as on-air commentator for more than 100 TV and radio news
and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV,
Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com.
Kouri's own website is located at http://jimkouri.U.S.