Jareh Sebastian Dalke pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to transmit classified National Defense Information (NDI) to an agent of Russia. Dalke was an employee of the National Security Agency from June 6, 2022, to July 1, 2022, where he served as an Information Systems Security Designer.
He admitted that in August and September 2022, he used an encrypted email account to send portions of three secret documents to a person he believed to be a Russian spy. These portions were sent to the person in question. He did this to demonstrate that he was entitled to access the information and that he was willing to share the knowledge he had gained. It turns out that the FBI internet undercover employee he had identified as a Russian spy was actually someone completely different. The Department of Justice asserts that all three of the documents from which the excerpts were taken include NDI, also known as extremely sensitive data, and that Dalkes was in possession of them while he was employed by the NSA.
On August 26, 2022, Dalke asked for and was awarded $85,000 for the information he provided to the FBI informant in exchange for the information, and he claimed that he had more information to share once he returned to the Washington, DC area. Dalke devised a strategy to provide over some additional classified information that he had acquired to the agent stationed at Union Station in Denver. He forwarded five files, four of which included very sensitive NDI, using a laptop that was provided to him by an undercover employee of the FBI who worked online. A little while after Dalke had sent the papers, agents from the FBI swooped in and arrested him.
According to a news release issued by the Department of Justice, Dalke entered a guilty plea to the charge of knowingly and willingly transmitting data to an undercover FBI employee online with the expectation that the information would be used in a manner that would be detrimental to the United States and advantageous to Russia. Because of his acts, he faces the possibility of serving anywhere from ten years to the rest of his life in prison. On April 26, 2024, a judge in a district court in the United States will make a decision regarding a penalty after taking into account the United States Sentencing Guidelines as well as other factors.
