A former National Security Agency contractor who stored two decades’ worth of classified documents at his Maryland home was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison.
Harold Martin, 54, apologized to the federal judge who sentenced him for a theft that prosecutors have called “breathtaking” in scope.
“My methods were wrong, illegal and highly questionable,” Martin told U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett.
The punishment was in line with the nine-year sentence called for under his plea agreement, in which he admitted guilt to a single count of willful retention of national defense information. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Martin gets credit for the nearly three years he has spent behind bars since his arrest.
A prosecutor and defense attorney both noted there is no evidence that Martin intended to transmit any of the classified information to anyone, but the judge said the trove of records contained “very sensitive material.”
“That means people’s lives were potentially in danger,” Bennett said.
The sentencing resolves a mysterious case that broke into the open in 2016, when FBI agents conducting a raid found a massive trove of stolen government documents inside his home, car and storage shed.
“This case is enormously significant not only for the Justice Department but also for the intelligence community,” Robert Hur, the United States attorney in Maryland, told The Associated Press in an interview before the sentencing. “In any case where you have someone who holds a security clearance at the level that Mr. Martin did and chooses to betray that public trust in such a profound way, it puts national security at ..
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