A federal grand jury unveiled an indictment Feb. 8 charging a former NSA contractor with stealing highly classified documents over the course of a 20-year career.
Harold Martin, 52, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, faces a potential 200-year sentence – 10 years on each of 20 counts of willful retention of national defense information.
"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," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said after the indictment was unsealed.
The charges allege that Martin – who began work as a government contractor in 1993, working for at least seven different companies, including most recently Booz Allen Hamilton – began taking home top secret and sensitive compartmented information (SCI) documents as early as 1996 and continued to do so through to his arrest in August 2016.
Officials said back in October that Martin stole some 50 terabytes of information, much of it related to cybersecurity and national defense.
Baltimore Sun reporter Ian Duncan noted in a tweet that the Feb. 8 indictment enumerates some of these documents, including:
"The FBI investigation and this indictment reveal a broken trust from a security clearance holder," said Special Agent in Charge Gordon B. Johnson of the FBI's Baltimore Division. "Willfully retaining highly classified national defense information in a vulnerable setting is a violation of the security policy and the law, which weakens our national security and cannot be tolerated."
While prosecutors had previously accused Martin of a "breathtaking" theft and had raised the prospect that he could be providing the information to a foreign government, the indictment contains no allegations that he spied for or colluded with any other country or even that he gave away the documents.
Martin's attorney, federal defender James Wyda, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Wednesday. He has previously described Martin, a former Navy lieutenant, as a "compulsive hoarder" who never intended to harm his country and who took work documents home with him as he strove to be as committed to his job as possible.
Martin's first course appearance is set for Feb. 14 in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
AP reporters Juliet Linderman and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.
