Analyst charged with leaking secret files

A counterterrorism analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency has been charged with leaking topsecret details about foreign countries’ weapons systems to two journalists, including a reporter with whom he was apparently romantically involved, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Henry Frese, 30, of Alexandria, Virginia, “was caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information,” the Justice Department said.

After a federal indictment of Frese was unsealed Wednesday, the department said in a statement that his alleged “unauthorized disclosure of TOP SECRET information could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.”

His alleged motive apparently was to advance the career of the female reporter with whom he had a relationship, the FBI said in a court affidavit. Frese allegedly passed additional top secret information to one of the woman’s colleagues at “an affiliated but different news outlet.”

The two journalists were not immediately identified, but one of them, a woman, shared an Alexandria residence with Frese from August 2017 to August 2018, authorities said.

Frese, who had a highlevel security clearance, was arrested Wednesday morning as he arrived for work at DNI offices in Reston, Virginia, authorities said. The indictment, issued by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, charges him with two counts of willful transmission of national defense information.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether Frese had a lawyer. A family member reached by The Washington Post said they had no comment.

Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Frese used his security clearance to obtain DNI intelligence reports that “were outside his area of responsibility.” Frese joined the DNI as an intelligence contractor in January 2017 and was hired as a counterterrorism analyst 13 months later.

“Mr. Frese not only provided this information on his own, but the government believes he was taking direction from members of the media,” FBI agent Alan Kohler, head of the counterintelligence division in the Washington field office, told reporters.

“He was searching for and accessing information that he had no reason to access,” Kohler said. “He did not need to know the information in the intelligence reports.”

In August 2017, thenAttorney General Jeff Sessions said the Trump administration would ramp up enforcement against leakers of classified materials. Since then, six people have been charged with crimes, said Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the Justice Department’s top national security official.

The top secret information that Frese allegedly leaked concerned the capabilities of foreign nations’ weapons systems. Authorities declined to identify the countries.

“When a government employee leaks classified information that gets published, that national security information becomes available to everyone,” Demers said. “Everyone includes every hostile foreign power, and everyone includes every terrorist organization.”