NSA Contractor Accused Of Stealing Data Far More Sensitive Than The Snowden Docs

By James Holbrooks

According to an indictment released Wednesday, the information stolen by Harold Martin, a former N.S.A. contractor who was arrested in August of last year, may be far more damaging to the U.S. intelligence community than anything taken by Edward Snowden.

On October 5, the New York Times broke the story that the F.B.I. had arrested an employee of the intelligence community over suspicions the worker had stolen highly classified computer code.

From that report:

The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin III of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August and unsealed Wednesday. Mr. Martin, who at the time of his arrest was working as a contractor for the Defense Department after leaving the N.S.A., was charged with theft of government property and the unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents.

According to the Times, a neighbor saw “two dozen F.B.I. agents wearing military-style uniforms and armed with long guns” storm Martin’s home and later escort the man out in handcuffs.

At the time, there was speculation that Martin could be connected to stolen N.S.A. code that found its way into the hands of a group called the Shadow Brokers — for a period, Martin worked for the elite N.S.A. unit from which the data was taken — but even now, authorities can’t prove he actually passed on any information.

But the mere fact that he possessed such highly sensitive material is enough to put Martin away for the rest of his life, as the recently released indictment indicates.

“For more than two decades,” Business Insider wrote on Thursday, “Martin allegedly made off with highly-classified documents that were found in his home and car that included discussions of the US military’s capabilities and gaps in cyberspace, specific targets, and ‘extremely sensitive’ operations against terror groups, according to an indictment released Wednesday.”

The indictment gives the public a much clearer look at the type of data Martin allegedly stole. And next to Edward Snowden, whose security clearance limited the documents he took to mostly training materials, it appears Harold Martin’s reach went far further into the national intelligence community.

Martin is charged with 20 counts of having unauthorized possession of classified material. The government alleges that over this long intelligence career, the 51-year-old took material from the N.S.A., the National Reconnaissance Office, U.S. Cyber Command, and even the C.I.A.

Some of the items allegedly taken, according to text from the indictment, include:

  • A 2008 CIA document containing information regarding foreign intelligence collection sources and methods, and relating to a foreign intelligence collection target.
  • A USCYBERCOM document, dated August 17, 2016, discussing capabilities and gaps in capabilities of the US military and details of specific operations.
  • A description of the technical architecture of an NSA communications system.
  • An outline of a classified exercise involving real-world NSA and US military resources to demonstrate existing cyber intelligence and operational capabilities.

Martin’s first court appearance is set for February 14. If found guilty, he faces up to 200 years in prison.

This article (NSA Contractor Accused of Stealing Data Far More Sensitive Than the Snowden Docs) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.


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9 Comments on "NSA Contractor Accused Of Stealing Data Far More Sensitive Than The Snowden Docs"

  1. Hillbillary and team Poedesta have a get out of jail free card, while this smuck will, no doubt, spend the rest of his life with bubba at the no-tell -gray bar hotel.
    See Monica Petersen…Hatianblogger…RIP

  2. And the silence from the MSM in the US is deafening…..

    • In fact, I just did a search of Mr. Martin and found articles at NY Times, NBC, CNN, Business Insider etc. of course much of it is misinformation/ biased reporting, but that is to be expected.

  3. Please call your congressional house representative @ 202-224-3121 and tell your house representative to vote YES on HR193 “The Sovereignty Restoration Act” to get America OUT of the Satanic Globalist New World Order ORGANIZED CRIME SYNDICATE organization known as the United Nations. Representative Mike Rodgers from Alabama is sponsoring this bill. Please make this message viral.

  4. Makes me wonder who paid him to undermine the security of the US? My bet is on Obama and the Clintons because they are already traitors for selling arms to terrorists. God only knows who Hillary was selling information to through her emails and the Clinton Foundation scandal.

    • We have been selling weapons to terrorists since the days of Bush Sr, if not before. Don’t make this a partisan thing. Both the neoliberals and neoconservatives want the same thing- unlimited money and power. I am grateful for every exposure of our governments nefarious deeds.

      • I agree. I almost stopped voting when Bush 43 called people vigilantees who went to volunteer at the border to stop the illegals. By his second term I could already see he was not for the people. The last President that I felt did anything for the people was Reagan. The problem is that our government has been working against the people for over a hundred years already and I doubt we’ll ever get a constitutional government back again.

        • Research Reagan. I always thought he was a good guy until I started reading up on him and the fact he was involved in the Iran Contra scandal. There’s more if you look and you will see he fit right in with the rest of the criminals in D.C.

          • Reagan had to work with a Dem Congress and they lied a lot about things like building a border wall if he gave amnesty to two or three million illegals. After Carter the US was in a mess, but Reagan’s policies put the country back on it’s feet. I know a lot of Dems hated him and he was almost assassinated so he fell more in line after that, but I still think he did a lot of good for America.

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