A federal contractor has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information from the U.S. government, authorities announced Wednesday.
Harold Martin, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, authorities said.
He was arrested in August after investigators searched his home in Glen Burnie and found documents and digital information stored on various devices that contained highly classified information, authorities said. Officials said the material was recovered from Martin’s car and two storage sheds on his property.
The exact nature of what was recovered is unclear, though a criminal complaint alleges that some documents were produced in 2014 and were “critical to a wide variety of national security issues.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the FBI had secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton in recent weeks and was investigating whether he disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, though it did not initially name Martin. The same month Martin was arrested, some of the most powerful hacking tools created by the NSA were leaked online.
If convicted, Martin would face a maximum of 11 years in prison. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland said he appeared in court on August 29 and remains detained. The charges against him were unsealed Wednesday.
This story will be updated.
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