Sicko ex-CEO gets a Bowner and pleads guilty to being a perv

Robert Johnson, former publisher of Newsday and a New York State Regent, entered a guilty plea Friday to charges he possessed child pornography and destroyed computer records that were the subject of a federal investigation.

Johnson, 60, entered his plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan after an investigation by federal agents that began in May 2003.

Johnson left Newsday in 1994, after a dozen years with the newspaper. In 1986, he was promoted to chief executive officer and publisher.

He had served on the state's Board of Regents, an influential education oversight group, from 1995 until his departure in 2004, around the time federal authorities say the case against him began to build.

Johnson left Newsday for Bowne & Co., in Manhattan, where he had been chief executive officer. He retired from the company in May 2004, citing only "personal reasons."

Key executives at Bowne cooperated with the federal investigation, according to sources familiar with the investigation. Bowne seized the computers, and Johnson then retired.

According to an indictment against him, and his guilty plea, Johnson "knowingly possessed sexually explicit photographs of children on a computer owned" by Bowne. "Johnson had obtained the illegal images by purchasing membership rights to websites that sold child pornography," his guilty plea said.

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