Disciplined At Time Magazine; Took Early Retirement

Former TSA and DHS Spokesman Brian J. Doyle, 55, arrested Tuesday for attempting to seduce a child over the internet, was disciplined at an earlier job at Time Magazine's Washington Bureau for downloading porn to company computers, according to an A-section report in the Washington Post.

Reporter Spencer S. Hsu wrote that he interviewed multiple sources -- co-workers, supervisors, and friends of Doyle -- who described Doyle (right) as having had porn problems at Time's Washington bureau.

Doyle was hired by the TSA in 2002. He apparently wasn't investigated for a security clearance until 2004 and 2005. The Office of Personnel Management, which conducted the background checks, granted him Secret and Top Secret clearances respectively.

Time spokesman Ty Trippet told the Post that Doyle took a voluntary retirement deal in 2001, after working for Time since 1975. The Post reports that co-workers said that Doyle got in trouble in 2001 over porn downloads that began by 1999 and continued until he was caught.

Office of Personnel Management investigators did interview Doyle's supervisors and peers at Time, but will not say if they found out about Doyle's 2001 troubles and cleared him anyway -- or if they didn't find out at all.

"[I]f there was an incident at Time magazine, Homeland Security above all should have found it," Rep. Peter T. King, a New York Republican, said. "Homeland Security is our last line of defense, and to be taken seriously, you have to have very, very strict security standards." King has begun an investigation into DHS hiring practices and security.

Doyle (right) remains in jail in Montgomery County, Maryland, awaiting extradition to Polk County, FL, where detectives claim to have caught him in an internet sting operation. In these, detectives typically pose as children or teenagers in chatrooms, and play along with pedophiles who express interest in meeting -- long enough to identify them and remove them from circulation.

According to the co-workers, when Doyle was caught at Time, some of his co-workers started and signed a petition to management, on Doyle's behalf. Whether this weighed in Time's decision at all is unknown.

If Time employees were untruthful to Federal investigators, they could, theoretically at least, have legal problems.

It is unclear whether Doyle's alleged misconduct at Time involved underage subjects, as his currently alleged misconduct does. If not, his porn problem at Time may have been a violation of company policy, but not of law.

FMI: www.dhs.gov