AUSTIN - A former office manager for Smirk's media adviser has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud
and perjury, accepting responsibility for stealing and mailing debate preparation materials to the Al Gore
campaign, then lying about it to a grand jury.  Under the deal she reached with prosecutors,
Juanita Yvette Lozano, 31, of Austin faces a $200 fine and prison sentence of between six months and
a year under federal sentencing guidelines, according to court documents filed Friday.

A judge has the option of allowing her to serve her time at home or in a halfway house.   The plea concludes
the case that launched the presidential mole hunt of 2000. It began with the Sept. 11 mailing of a Bush videotape,
strategy book and other papers swiped from Maverick Media.   The material was sent to former U.S. Rep.
Tom Downey, D-N.Y., who was advising Mr. Gore before the first presidential faceoff with Mr. Bush.
Mr. Downey promptly turned the materials over to the FBI, and agents later identified Ms. Lozano as a
likely suspect, based on surveillance videotape from the downtown Austin post office.

In exchange for her plea, the government is dropping one count of a three-count indictment, the accusation
that Ms. Lozano lied to the FBI during the investigation.   The papers contain a lengthy restatement of the facts
alleged in the indictment, along with Ms. Lozano's concession - despite her longtime insistence to the contrary
- that they are true.

"I hereby admit that all of the allegations contained in (the plea papers) are true and correct and that I am guilty
of the offenses charged..." said a statement that Ms. Lozano signed under a detailed recounting of her acts.
Early in the investigation, Ms. Lozano insisted the post-office video showed her mailing a pair of her boss'
pants back to The Gap. To the grand jury, she didn't deny mailing the package, but said she had no idea who
the recipient was.   Among the cloak-and-dagger details she acknowledged was how she used her home
computer to look up Mr. Downey's address on the Internet, before sending him a package promising further
help and signed "Good luck, Amy."

FBI agents found a record of that address search on her hard drive, and her subsequent denial of that to the
grand jury was the basis of the perjury charge against her.   Ms. Lozano could not be reached and her lawyer
did not return a call seeking comment. No date has been set for her to enter her plea, though a person familiar
with the negotiations said that is likely to happen June 8, when a pre-trial hearing had been scheduled in front
of U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks in Austin.   Sentencing normally takes place two to three months after
a plea, following a court background investigation.

The pleadings give conspiracy theorists no answers about Ms. Lozano's motives or any help she may have gotten
from other people.   The agreement includes standard plea language in which Ms. Lozano agreed to cooperate
with the government in her case, and any others that she may know about. Prosecutors in the Public Integrity
section of the Justice Department have never mentioned charges against anyone else, but again Friday declined
to rule them out or otherwise comment on the agreement. In the past, government lawyers have characterized
the Bush campaign as victims, not suspects, in the case.  

(Well, isn't that always the case when Daddy has CIA connections?)

A White House spokesman said a conclusion to the matter was welcomed.
"We said all along we would be surprised and disappointed if the allegations were true, and we are,"
said Scott McClellan. "It appears that we have now gotten to the bottom of it, and we expressed all along
that no one is more interested than we are to get to the bottom of it."

So, Karl Rove gets away with another dirty, illegal trick.
Lee Atwater was a good mentor, wasn't he, Karl?

Thanks to John Garza