ARLINGTON, Va. -- Autopsy results released Saturday said the shotgun wound that killed a retired intelligence expert linked to Libya is 'consistent with being self-inflicted,' but police said they have not ruled out foul play.
An attorney for Waldo Dubberstein, 75, accused of selling secrets to Libya, described the former CIA and Pentagon employee as 'a very dedicated American' and said he is 'totally innocent' of the charges against him.
Dr. James Byer, deputy chief medical examiner for Northern Virginia, performed an autopsy Saturday and reported the cause of death was 'a perforating shutgun wound to the head, consistent with being self-inflicted.'
A police spokesman said Arlington police still are looking into the possibility of foul play and expect the investigation to continue for several days. FBI officials also investigating Dubberstein's death refused to comment.
Police found Dubberstein dead in a basement storage room of of an Arlington apartment house Friday less than 24 hours after a federal grand jury indicted for selling U.S. military secrets to the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Kahdafy through renegade CIA agent Edwin Wilson.
Law enforcement sources said Dubberstein left a series of suicide notes addressed to his lawyers, his wife and another woman with whom he had been living.
Dubberstein's lawyer, Howard Bushman, said in a telephone interview he has not seen the notes and does not know their contents but will meet with Arlington detectives about them Monday.
If Dubberstein committed suicide, the lawyer said, 'I think that considering his health and his age and the pressures that were placed upon him he may have felt that he just could not go through all of this.'
'Mr. Dubberstein was a very dedicated American who spent his entire life in government employment and, at this age in life, it's very unlikely that he would have done anything that would have in any way harmed his country,' Bushman said.
Dubberstein, who retired last year from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, had been scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Alexandria Friday for arraignment and was declared a fugitive when he failed to show up.
Police, called to the apartment house by another tenant, said they found Dubberstein sitting up with a 12 gauge shotgun and unused shells next to him. They said he apparently had wedged the shotgun between his legs, put the muzzle in his mouth and fired.
The seven-count indictment accused Dubberstein, a Middle East expert who worked previously for the CIA, of passing classified summaries and analyses on the region to Wilson. It said he was paid more than $32,000.
Dubberstein is the third person involved in Wilson's tangled affairs to die.
Wilson himself is awaiting trial in New York on charges of trying to arrange the murders of two Washington prosecutors and federal witnesses.
He has been sentenced to a total of 32 years in prison in trials in Alexandria and Houston on charges of conspiring to smuggle guns and explosives to Libya. He was exonerated in a trial in Washington on charges of plotting the assassination of a former associate of Khadafy's who broke with the Libyan leader.
