A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst was arrested for supplying top secret national defense information (NDI) on a foreign country’s weapons systems to two journalists, one of whom he reportedly was engaged with romantically.
Henry Kyle Frese, 30, of Alexandria, Va., accessed classified reports in April and May 2018 and passed them to the journalist with whom he was apparently living. At that journalist’s behest, he agreed to speak with a second journalist. A court-authorized surveillance of his cell phone showed that Frese orally disclosed “secret level” information to the second journalist, which a Justice Department release said “could reasonably be expected to cause serious harm to the national security of the United States.”
That surveillance led to his arrest.
“As laid out in today’s indictment, Frese was caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information for personal gain,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a release. “Frese betrayed the trust placed in him by the American people – a betrayal that risked harming the national security of this country. This is one of six unauthorized disclosure cases the Department has charged in just over two years, and we will continue in our efforts to punish and deter this behavior.”
