Feds Discipline Six Over Laptop

Tuesday, December 5th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) â€” In a widening dispute over a missing laptop computer, the State Department has ruled that six employees should be disciplined in a range of actions from reprimand to firing, spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a parallel move, ordered the reassignment of Donald Keyser, deputy director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, to a less prominent post. This prompted the bureau director, J. Stapleton Roy, a former ambassador to China, to resign effective Tuesday. Roy was due to retire in January.

The six officers whose discipline was proposed have a right to respond and to a hearing, Boucher said.

The departure of Roy, one of the most senior Foreign Service officers, was seen as a show of support for Keyser, who last week was suspended by Albright for 30 days without pay. Roy was not disciplined.

The laptop computer and its classified contents disappeared in January, prompting complaints by several members of Congress that the State Department had a lax approach to security. Albright vowed to tighten procedures.

In the meantime, an unclassified laptop signed out by Morton Halperin, who heads the department's Policy Planning Bureau, disappeared but no action was taken.

Roy and Keyser, who worked together many times in their long careers, are two of the department's top China experts. Roy, who grew up in China as the son of a missionary, served also as ambassador to Indonesia and Singapore.

He is one of two active Foreign Service officers with the rank of ``career ambassador.'' The other is Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state for political affairs.