Former NSA Contractor Indicted for Stealing Classified Files
Grand jury accepts Justice Department allegations against Harold Martin.
A former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor working for multiple national security agencies was indicted by a grand jury on Wednesday, Justice Department prosecutors announced.
Harold Martin III, 52, of Glen Burnie, Md., is charged with willful retention of defense information following his arrest in August. Documents, laptops and software found in his home included top secret data related to key anti-hacking tools used within the National Security Agency. News reports cited 50 terabytes of information, some of it marked “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”
From 1993 to 2016, Martin was employed by seven different private companies, Justice said in a statement. The indictment said he had worked for the CIA, U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Department and the National Reconnaissance Office.
“The indictment alleges that for as long as two decades, Harold Martin flagrantly abused the trust placed in him by the government by stealing documents containing highly classified information,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, based in Maryland.
"The FBI investigation and this indictment reveal a broken trust from a security clearance holder," said Special Agent in charge Gordon Johnson, based in Baltimore.
Martin received training in handling of classified information, Justice added, and “he was never authorized to retain these documents at his residence or in his vehicle.”
Martin is in custody, and is scheduled for a hearing Feb. 14. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of 20 counts.