Robert Johnson, the former publisher of Newsday and a New York State Regent, entered a guilty plea Friday to charges that he possessed child pornography and destroyed computer records that were the subject of a federal investigation.
A recent report by Newsday, Johnson's former publication, said that Johnson, 60, “entered his plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan after an investigation by federal agents that began in May 2003.”
Johnson left the publication in 1994, after a dozen years with the newspaper. In 1986, he was promoted to chief executive officer and publisher.
Johnson had served with the state's Board of Regents, an education oversight group, from 1995, until he left the group in 2004. Around that time, reported Newsday, federal authorities say the case against him "began to build."
Newsday staff writer James Bernstein reported that Johnson left the publication for Bowne & Co., in Manhattan, “where he had been chief executive officer. He retired from the company in May 2004, citing only ‘personal reasons.’”
Key executives at Bowne cooperated with the federal investigation, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Bowne seized the computers and Johnson then retired.
According to an indictment against him, and his guilty plea, Johnson "knowingly possessed sexually explicit photographs of children on a computer owned" by Bowne. "Johnson had obtained the illegal images by purchasing membership rights to websites that sold child pornography," his guilty plea said.
The indictment said that prior to May 2004, ICE agents learned Johnson, using the Internet aliases "robjob714," and jobobo55," had purchased memberships in websites believed to contain and distribute child pornography.
On May 4, 2004, a Bowne executive told Johnson that the company had received an inquiry from federal authorities concerning the use of company equipment to access Internet websites that contain and distribute child pornography, the indictment said.
But after learning of the inquiries, the indictment said, Johnson used a computer program called "Evidence Eliminator" to destroy and obliterate more than 12,000 files from the hard disc drive of the desktop and laptop computers assigned to him by Bowne, the indictment said.
Bernstein reported that “Johnson faces a maximum 10 year prison sentence on the charge of possession of child pornography and a maximum of 20 years on the charge of destruction of documents in connection with a federal investigation.”
He is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Oct. 27.
