{"id":118417,"date":"2021-10-11T08:45:55","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T12:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=118417"},"modified":"2021-10-11T08:45:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T12:45:55","slug":"navy-nuclear-engineer-charged-with-trying-to-pass-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=118417","title":{"rendered":"Navy nuclear engineer charged with trying to pass secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fox News reports<\/a>;<\/p>\n

A Navy nuclear engineer with access to military secrets has been charged with trying to pass information about the design of American nuclear-powered submarines to someone he thought was a representative of a foreign government but who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, the Justice Department said Sunday.<\/p>\n

In a criminal complaint detailing espionage-related charges against Jonathan Toebbe, the government said he sold information for nearly the past year to a contact he believed represented a foreign power. That country was not named in the court documents.<\/p>\n

Toebbe, 42, was arrested in West Virginia on Saturday along with his wife, Diana, 45, after he had placed a removable memory card at a prearranged “dead drop” in the state, according to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether the Toebbes, who are from Annapolis, Maryland, have lawyers. The Navy declined to comment Sunday.<\/p>\n

The FBI says the scheme began in April 2020 when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information.<\/p>\n

Authorities say he also provided instructions for how to conduct the furtive relationship, with a letter that said: “I apologize for this poor translation into your language. Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax.”<\/p>\n

That package, which had a return address in Pittsburgh, was obtained by the FBI last December through its legal attache office in the unspecified foreign country. That led to a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of the foreign government made contact with Toebbe an agreed to pay thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for the information he was offering.<\/p>\n

In June, the FBI says, the undercover agent sent $10,000 in cryptocurrency to Toebbe, describing it as a sign of good faith and trust.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, federal agents watched as the Toebbes arrived at an agreed-upon location in West Virginia for the exchange, with Diana Toebbe appearing to serve as a lookout for her husband during a dead-drop operation for which the FBI paid $20,000, according to the complaint. The FBI recovered a blue memory card wrapped in plastic and placed between two slices of bread on a peanut butter sandwich, court documents say.<\/p>\n

The FBI provided the contents of the memory card to a Navy subject matter expert, who determined that the records included design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors, the Justice Department said.<\/p>\n

Those submarines are sophisticated, nuclear-powered “cruise missile fast-attack submarines,” according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

The memory card also included a typed message that said, in part: “I hope your experts are very happy with the sample provided and I understand the importance of a small exchange to grow our trust.”<\/p>\n

The FBI conducted similar dead-drop exchanges over the next several months, including one in August in Virginia in which Toebbe concealed in a chewing gum package a memory card that contained schematic designs for the Virginia-class submarine and was paid roughly $70,000, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

The complaint alleges violations of the Atomic Energy Act, which restricts the disclosure of information related to atomic weapons or nuclear materials.<\/p>\n

The Toebbes are expected to have their initial court appearances Tuesday in Martinsburg, West Virginia.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Toebbe has worked for the U.S. government since 2012, holding a top-secret security clearance and specializing in naval nuclear propulsion, the FBI says. He has also been assigned to a government-owned laboratory in the Pittsburgh area that officials say works on nuclear power for the U.S. Navy.<\/p>\n

No one answered at the Toebbe residence on Sunday afternoon in a waterside Annapolis community by the South River. An outside light was on above the door of their home, and a dog barked inside.<\/p>\n

John Cooley, who lives across the street from the Toebbes, said he counted more than 30 FBI agents on his block on Saturday from about 2:30 p.m. until after dark. He said agents went inside the home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fox News reports; A Navy nuclear engineer with access to military secrets has been charged with … Navy nuclear engineer charged with trying to pass secrets<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118418,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118417\/revisions\/118418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}