Case of Former N.S.A. Contractor Escalates as Espionage Act Charges Loom
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Version 0 of 1. BALTIMORE — A former intelligence contractor stole the equivalent of 500 million pages of government documents over two decades of work at seven companies, including top-secret plans for an operation against a hostile country, prosecutors said in papers filed in Federal District Court here on Thursday. The prosecutors also said that the former contractor, Harold T. Martin III, who worked for the National Security Agency and other military and intelligence agencies, kept an “arsenal” of 10 firearms at home in Maryland, including an assault-style rifle and a loaded handgun that he kept illegally in his car. Mr. Martin, 51, a computer expert and Ph.D. student, was arrested Aug. 27 after he posted something on the internet that drew the attention of F.B.I. agents investigating the appearance of highly classified N.S.A. hacking tools for sale on the web. The bureau is trying to determine whether Mr. Martin, who is said to have taken the hacking tools home, was the source of the material offered at auction by people calling themselves the Shadow Brokers. Mr. Martin was initially charged with theft of government property and mishandling of classified information, violations carrying a maximum sentence of 11 years. But the new filing said prosecutors planned to charge him with violating the Espionage Act and committing other felonies, crimes that could put him in prison for decades if he is convicted. He is scheduled to appear at a hearing in federal court on Friday afternoon for arguments about whether he will remain in detention. The government’s filing deepens the mystery surrounding Mr. Martin’s grand-scale compilation over decades of a home library of top-secret material, some of which F.B.I. agents found lying in the open in his car and home office. The new details in the government’s filing paint a darker picture, offering hints — though no proof — that he might have taken the material to give it to others, conceivably even to a foreign nation. Prosecutors said he had communicated with others in foreign languages, including Russian, and downloaded information about the Russian language. “He presents tremendous value to any foreign power that may wish to shelter him within or outside the United States,” they wrote. Calling the evidence against Mr. Martin “overwhelming” and his thefts “breathtaking,” the prosecutors said his “crimes reflect a willingness to routinely betray the trust of the nation.” Given that history, they said, he would pose a “grave danger” if released and could not be trusted to show up at a future trial. In addition, the filing suggested that Mr. Martin might have stored secret documents electronically in a hidden place in the “cloud” where he could gain access to them if released, using specialized software to try to hide his electronic tracks. “In July 2016,” the filing says, “he watched a video about how individuals who attempt to remain anonymous on the internet are caught by authorities.” Friends and online writings portray Mr. Martin, a Navy veteran who served in Desert Storm, as a quirky, workaholic patriot with a tendency to hoard books and documents. He has told investigators that he got in the habit of taking material home only to improve his skills and knowledge and never gave anything secret away. Among the data he took, prosecutors said, was a top-secret document describing “specific operational plans against a known enemy of the United States.” Mr. Martin, who worked at times in units focused on offensive cyberattacks, “was not directly involved in this operation and had no reason to know about its specifics or to possess this document.” In his car, officials said, agents found a chain of emails marked top secret with handwritten notes on the back describing N.S.A. operations and computer infrastructure, written as if for a layperson who was not part of the intelligence agencies. But there is no indication that Mr. Martin gave the information to anyone else. The prosecutors quoted a cryptic 2007 letter that Mr. Martin apparently wrote but never sent in which he showed contempt for colleagues in the covert world. “You are missing most of the basics in security practice, while thinking you are the best,” he wrote. Addressing his colleagues as “Dudes/Dudettes,” he threatened to bring them “into the light,” though the language could be interpreted as a threat to report lax security to agency bosses. Mr. Martin’s lawyers, in an answer to the prosecutors, argued that Mr. Martin should be released pending trial, listing more than a dozen roughly similar cases in which the defendant was allowed to remain free. They said he did not have a valid passport, and his wife and home are in Maryland, so he would pose no flight risk. Mr. Martin, the lawyers wrote, “has devoted his entire career to serving his country.” They added, “There is no evidence he intended to betray his country.” |