TEHRAN, May 13 - The US Justice Department has announced the conviction of a former CIA contractor who pleaded guilty for theft of classified information amid growing cases of government contractors accused of stealing secrets from spy agencies.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) – According to US prosecutors, Reynaldo B. Regis – who was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from August 2006 to November 2016 -- “spent a decade conducting unauthorized searches in classified CIA databases, then copying secret information into personal notebooks that he took home,” Politico reported Friday.
Citing court documents, the report adds that the 53-year-old Regis lied about his actions when confronted by investigators about the alleged theft but a subsequent search of his home uncovered “approximately 60 notebooks filled with classified information.”
The government, however, did not elaborate about the contractor’s motivation for transferring the confidential information out of the CIA. He is due to be sentenced on September 21, when he faces up to six years imprisonment.
The conviction of Regis adds to the increasing list of US government contractors accused of stealing classified materials from the country’s various intelligence agencies, notably the CIA and NSA (National Security Agency).
In the past two years, NSA contractor Harold Martin agreed to plead guilty to stealing secret information from the spy agency for years, while another contractor, Reality Winner, confessed to prosecutors that she used her underwear to smuggle out a classified report on Russian election hacking from an NSA office in Georgia.
More famously, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden also leaked massive documents detailing the agency’s extensive snooping apparatus.
This is while both the CIA and the NSA have also been targeted by online leaks of their clandestine hacking instruments.
An obscure online group known as Shadow Brokers, suspected by US experts of being a front for Russian intelligence, has intermittently posted the NSA’s cyber weapons online.
Additionally, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published documents last year revealing the CIA’s apparent hacking arsenal.
Source: Press TV
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