Justice Department arrests, charges IT contractor with espionage
The Justice Department has arrested and charged an IT contractor with two counts of espionage charges. The Justice Department has arrested and charged an IT contract or with two counts of espionage for allegedly taking secret and top-secret information from the State Department and sending it to a foreign country. Abraham Teklu Lemma, a foreign national with U.S. citizenship, was working as an evening help desk technician assigned to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research with the U.S. Department of State when he is alleged to have copied large amounts of classified information, including documents, photographs, notes, maps and satellite imagery, and transmitted it to a foreign country using an encrypted messaging application. "Between on or about December 19, 2022, and August 7, 2023, Lemma copied and pasted information from at least 85 Intelligence Reports regarding many topics—the majority of which relate to the Relevant Country. Lemma accessed these Intelligence Reports with...