Ex-NSA Contractor Pleads Guilty to 20-Year-Long Theft of Classified Data

A former National Security Agency contractor—who stole an
enormous amount of sensitive information from the agency and then
stored it at his home and car for over two decades—today changed
his plea to guilty.

The theft was labeled as the largest heist of classified
government material in America’s history.

Harold Thomas Martin III, a 54-year-old Navy veteran from Glen
Burnie, abused his top-secret security clearances to stole at least
50 terabytes of
classified national defense data^[1]
from government computers over two decades while working for a
number of NSA departments between 1996 and 2016.

In August 2016, the FBI arrested Martin
at his Maryland home and found “six full bankers’ boxes” worth of
documents, many of which were marked “Secret” and “Top Secret,” in
his home and car.
^[2]

At the time of his arrest in August 2016, Martin also worked for
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp, the same company that previously
employed Edward
Snowden that also stole and leaked classified NSA
documents to the public in 2013.

Martin Pleads Guilty to Just 1 Count, Other 19 Charges
Dropped

Martin was initially charged with 20 counts of violating the
Espionage Act, but he pleaded not guilty at that time and was due
to go to trial in June this year.

After the prosecutors announced earlier this week that Martin
would be arraigned again, he admitted^[4] the wrongdoing in a
federal district court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to a single
charge of willful retention of defense information as part of a
plea deal.

In return, federal prosecutors dropped the remaining 19 charges
against Martin and recommended a 9-year prison sentence and three
years of supervised release.

The Department of Justice also proposed that after serving his
sentence, Martin should be forbidden from contacting any foreign
person, probably because he was also accused of leaking classified
data to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other United States
adversaries.

Martin’s arrest came just days after a mysterious hacking group,
calling itself Shadow Brokers, began posting the NSA’s top secret
hacking tools and other materials on the Internet.

In separate news earlier this year, it was also reported that a
Twitter account associated with Martin contacted
Kaspersky Lab^[5]
researchers just 30 minutes before the Shadow Brokers began leaking
the NSA classified documents.

The timing of the Twitter messages, the Shadow Brokers leaks,
Martin access to the NSA’s elite hacking unit, and other clues
immediately triggered a red flag at Kaspersky, who then reported
the communication to the NSA.

However, federal agents did not find any direct connection between
Martin and the Shadow Brokers.

If the court accepts this week’s plea agreement, Martin will be
sentenced to nine years in federal prison. His sentencing is
scheduled for July 17.

Martin’s case was one of the multiple classified data breaches
the U.S. intelligence agency faced in recent years.

In December 2017, Nghia Hoang
Pho^[6], a 67-year-old former
NSA employee was sentenced to 5.5
years in prison^[7]
for illegally taking home classified documents, which were later
stolen by Russian hackers from his home PC that was running
Kaspersky antivirus.

In the case of
Pho^[8], the American government
accused Kaspersky Lab of colluding with the Russian intelligence
agency to obtain and expose the classified NSA data from the NSA
employee’s computer, though the antivirus firm vigorously and
repeatedly denied the
accusations^[9].

Another ex-NSA employee, Reality
Winner^[10], 26, who held a
top-secret security clearance was also sentenced to five
years and three months^[11] in prison last year for
leaking a classified report on Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S.
presidential election to an online news outlet.

^[3]