By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
A former special agent with the Environmental Protection Agency pleaded guilty Monday to lying in a civil case about having an affair with an FBI agent he was working with.
Keith Phillips, 61, of Kent, Texas, who worked in the EPA Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in Dallas, pleaded guilty in federal court in Louisiana to lying under oath and obstructing justice, the Justice Department said. The charges stemmed from his sworn testimony in a pending lawsuit in the Western District of Louisiana.
Authorities stated that Phillips and a female FBI agent from September 1996 to Dec. 14, 1999 investigated a criminal case that resulted in the indictment of Hubert Vidrine Jr. and several others.
The criminal charges against Vidrine were ultimately dismissed, and Vidrine turned around and filed a lawsuit against the federal government for malicious prosecution, authorities said.
Authorities said that during a deposition taken in Vidrine’s civil suit, agent Phillips “allegedly falsely testified that he did not have an affair with the FBI special agent, when, in fact, he did. The indictment alleges that it was material to the civil lawsuit to determine any potential motives of the criminal investigators in investigating and prosecuting the charges against Vidrine, and that Phillips committed perjury when he testified falsely about the affair and obstructed justice when he provided this false testimony.”
The indictment also alleges that he then contacted the FBI agent and tried to convince her not to confess to the affair.
