US counterterrorism analyst charged after leaking Chinese missile secrets to journalist he dated
- The Justice Department declined to provide any additional details about the classified information that was leaked, but articles focused on China’s missile systems
A counterterrorism analyst at the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly leaking top secret information to journalists, including a reporter he was dating, officials said
Henry Kyle Frese, 30, was arrested by the FBI when he arrived at work at a DIA facility in Virginia. He was charged with wilfully disclosing national defence information.
Frese, who has a top secret government security clearance, is alleged to have accessed at least five classified intelligence reports and provided top secret information about another country’s weapons systems to the reporter with whom he was having a relationship.
In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to take a stand against leaks, and the Justice Department has brought at least six leak investigation cases in the past two years.
Neither reporter was identified by name in court documents, but an analysis of news articles and social media posts indicates they are Amanda Macias of CNBC and Courtney Kube of NBC News. Those posts include a photo of Macias and Frese on Instagram from 2017.
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The Justice Department declined to provide any additional details about the classified information that was leaked, but the articles focused on China’s missile systems.
There was no immediate response from CNBC to a request for comment.
The reporter, believed to be Macias, published eight articles containing classified defence information between May and July of last year, prosecutors said.
In April 2018, after Frese accessed one of the intelligence reports, she sent him a private message on Twitter asking if he would be willing to speak with another journalist who prosecutors said worked at another outlet owned by the same company, court documents said. The second journalist is believed to be Kube.
Frese replied that he would help if it could help advance the first reporter’s career because he wanted to see her “progress”, according to the documents.
The government also intercepted a call in September during which Frese allegedly read classified national defence information to the second journalist, the documents say.
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“Frese betrayed the trust placed in him by the American people – a betrayal that risked harming the national security of this country,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers, who leads the Justice Department’s national security division.
Federal investigators believe Frese was “taking direction from members of the media” because he had searched for the intelligence documents that were outside his area of expertise, according to Alan Kohler, the special agent in charge of counter-intelligence at the FBI’s field office in Washington.
Although officials would not rule out the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the journalists, the top prosecutor whose office is prosecuting the case said investigators are “focused on the leaker, not the journalist”.
Frese could face up to 10 years in prison for each count of transmitting classified information.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
