WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- A former US Marine has been arrested for allegedly stealing classified documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's office when he worked on the vice president's staff, media reports said Wednesday.

    Leandro Aragoncillo, a naturalized American citizen born in the Philippines, worked at the White House from 1999 to 2001 and was assigned to the vice president's office under both Al Gore and Dick Cheney, ABC News reported.

    Aragoncillo, 46, worked at the White House for almost three years and took a job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an intelligence analyst in July last year, the report said.

    He was arrested last month and accused of downloading more than100 classified documents from FBI computers, it said. The documents were allegedly passed on to opposition politicians in the Philippines who were planning a coup.

    According to a criminal complaint released by the US Justice Department in September, while he worked at the FBI, Aragoncillo used an FBI database to obtain classified documents about the Philippines and sent them in e-mails to former and current officials in the Asian country from January to September 2005.

    The White House confirmed there was an ongoing investigation, but declined to give details.

    "It's an ongoing investigation ... We are fully cooperating," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. Enditem