Security News > 2023 > October > Ex-NSA techie pleads guilty to selling state secrets to Russia

Dalke, 31, admitted that he transmitted excerpts from three classified documents, and sent four in their entirety, to an FBI online covert employee, all of which contained national defense information determined [PDF] to be classified top secret.

A former US Army soldier, Dalke was employed at the NSA as an information security systems designer for less than a month, and resigned after the NSA denied his request for extended leave to take care of a sick family member.

Dalke told the OCE posing as a Russian official that he had taken his NSA job because he had "Questioned role in damage to the world in the past and by a mixture of curiosity for secrets and a desire to cause change."

After his resignation from the NSA, Dalke reapplied and was hired for a new position he would have started at the end of September 2022, which he told the OCE would put him in a position to exfiltrate further secrets.

As for Dalke's motivation to sell state secrets to Russians, no need to speculate.

Dalke printed the documents he sent to the OCE while employed at the NSA. A look at historical data on NSA systems made it easy to determine that it was his account alone that printed those four particular documents, the FBI said in its affidavit.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/nsa_techie_russia_espionage/