Child porn charge against DOD IPv6 director dropped By Patience Wait GCN Staff
Investigation continues
(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.