Des Plaines 'spy' sentenced to four years

A Des Plaines man accused of being a "sleeper agent" sent to spy on Saddam Hussein's enemies in the United States was sentenced Tuesday to four years in federal prison for lying about his ties to the former regime.

Sami Khoshaba Latchin, 61, waved to well-wishers and smiled after Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer gave him less than two-thirds of the sentence of more than six years she could have imposed under federal guidelines.

"There is no evidence that no matter what Mr. Latchin's intentions may have been that he ever posed a genuine threat," Pallmeyer said.

Latchin listened through a translator and nodded his head as Pallmeyer said that he "wasn't very good as a spy."

"He wasn't coming up with much against anybody -- ever," she said.

Latchin nodded again when she said that because of his "lack of effective success" as a spy there was "no basis on which any hostile organization would utilize him." She also said he would have been in his mid-80s and probably not much of a threat by the time Saddam Hussein's long-term plan for spying within the United States got up to full speed.

Latchin already has been in custody for more than seven months -- a period that will be deducted from his sentence. And he could get more than seven months off his sentence for good behavior while in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James M. Conway urged a tougher sentence for Latchin, saying he was a professional intelligence officer and not merely a businessman who picked up pin money by occasionally snooping.

"You're talking about two decades of spying on our country, Judge," Conway said.

Federal defender Mary Judge, representing Latchin, asked Pallmeyer to impose a sentence of a year and a day, which with time off for good behavior would have gotten him out of prison in only a few months.

But Pallmeyer said that as ineffectual as Latchin may have been in the espionage business, he still had to be punished for his work as a spy.

Latchin was never charged with espionage -- which means spying on classified military secrets. He was accused of keeping tabs on Iraqis living in the United States who were opponents of the Baghdad regime.

A federal court jury convicted him on April 16 of lying on a citizenship application, lying to an FBI agent, conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent, failing to register as a foreign agent and illegally accepting Iraqi government pay.

Among other things, witnesses said that Latchin lied when he denied he was a member of the Baath Party and that he was an employee of the Iraqi intelligence service.

At the nine-day trial, three former members of the Iraqi intelligence service testified that Latchin, a husky, gray-haired former airline employee with a brushy mustache, was part of their organization.

Two of the former intelligence officers testified using aliases, saying they were concerned about possible reprisals from sympathizers of the former regime.

Prosecutors also introduced documents slipped to an FBI agent by a Hussein critic after U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad.