The Justice Department is evaluating the case against a group of CIA employees who took 86 rare misprinted stamps from their office and sold them for thousands of dollars, a department spokesman said Saturday. Justice Department spokesman Tom Stewart said the agency's public integrity section had received the case and that ``they deal in bringing criminal charges, if necessary.'' ``I would not want you to think that something is imminent,'' he said. The Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions that the Justice Department was considering bringing criminal charges against the nine CIA employees, who discovered the rare stamps in the agency's supplies and sold them. The Post quoted unidentified intelligence and Justice Department sources as saying the CIA completed an internal review of what stamp collectors call the discovery of ``the CIA invert'' and turned the case over to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. The public integrity section is debating whether to bring charges of theft or misappropriation of government supplies against the employees, who replaced a sheet of 95 $1 stamps bearing an upside-down candlestick with a sheet of stamps that did not have the rare error, the newspaper said. Each member of the group kept one of the stamps and they sold the 86 remaining stamps in 1986 to a New Jersey dealer for thousands of dollars. Their identities were never made public. A CIA spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call Saturday about the case.
