A human rights group says its director's office was burglarized shortly after it filed a lawsuit this month against the CIA seeking information related to El Salvador's civil war.

A desktop computer and a hard drive were taken last week from the office of Angelina Godoy, director of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, the center and police say.

"[Godoy's] office was searched but its contents were treated carefully and the door was locked upon exit, characteristics which do not fit the pattern of opportunistic campus theft," the center said in a statement, describing the hard drive as having no resale value.

The center said the hard drive contains about 90 percent of its El Salvador research, including "sensitive details of personal testimonies and pending investigations."



The rights organization's lawsuit against the CIA, filed Oct. 2, seeks access to documents on El Salvador's civil war, particularly about a government commander suspected of involvement in a 1981 massacre.

Though its files are backed up, the center says it's concerned that whoever now has them can access witness statements from victims of the war, which pitted a U.S.-backed government and its armed supporters against communist rebels.

The crime is believed to have taken place between Wednesday and Sunday last week, says University of Washington Police Department spokesman Maj. Steve Rittereiser. It was reported to authorities Monday.

Rittereiser says police have not discovered relevant surveillance video footage and "it's fair to say we have not uncovered any leads at this point."



Police will be making an effort to determine if anyone is selling the desktop computer, a Mac, Rittereiser says, and the course of the investigation likely "depends what the individual who stole it is trying to do."

Theft of computers "is not an uncommon thing on campus" and "it happens in offices," Rittereiser says.

"For me, it looks like a campus burglary that's pretty traditional, [a] pretty standard kind of campus burglary," he adds. "Obviously it has some interesting twists to it because there's no sign of forced entry."

The time frame during which the crime occurred coincides with CIA Director John Brennan's Friday visit to the University of Washington campus. Godoy is not publicly alleging a possible connection and CIA spokesman Dean Boyd is pushing back forcefully when asked about the incident.

"I find it ridiculous, offensive, insulting and patently false, the entire premise of your suggestion that CIA had any involvement whatsoever in this incident," Boyd says. He gave a similar statement to The Stranger.



Rittereiser says police have not contacted the CIA as part of the investigation. "I'm not really ready to comment on a conspiracy theory right now," he says.

Godoy's office is located near several other offices on the second floor of a University of Washington academic building. Her office evidently was the only one affected.

"While we cannot rule out the possibility of this having been an incident of common crime," the center said in its statement, "we are deeply concerned that this breach of information security may increase the vulnerability of Salvadoran human rights defenders with whom we work."