NSA guy who tried and failed to spy for Russia gets 262 months in the slammer

In his trial yesterday, Jareh Sebastian Dalke pleaded guilty to six counts of attempted transmission of top-secret info to a foreign agent as announced by the Department of Justice. He had worked at the NSA as an information systems security designer for just under a month from June to July 2022, making quick work of the short period by accumulating top secret documents with national defense information (NDI).

Between August and September that year, shortly after leaving the NSA, Dalke made contact with a person he thought was a Russian agent. To prove his "legitimate access and willingness to share," he then emailed the apparent spy snippets of three top secret, classified documents with NDI. Dalke then said he'd be willing to sell the full documents and more for just $85k.

Dalke and the FBI agent then arranged a time and place to hand over the documents. On September 28, the former NSA worker took his laptop to Union Station in Denver and sent the documents to the FBI agent over the internet. Dalke also included a letter in Russian that said, among other things, "My friends! I am very happy to finally provide this information to you… I look forward to our friendship and shared benefit."

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