Disloyal and Disgraced

I rarely read or write political or spy themed mystery/thrillers, but this true-crime was so much more it intrigued me. Let’s see what you think.

Her job within the U.S. Intelligence Community came with high-level security. She didn't have custody of her six-year-old daughter. Her actions to gain custody of her daughter by any means possible violated her allegiance to her country and the court’s decision to grant custody to the father.

To use the U.S. Department of Justice’s terminology—she “retained” a TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE document that outlined foreign government military and political issues.

Then she and her daughter went to Mexico, where she made plans to sell the top secret information to Russia in exchange to relocate her and her daughter. Russia is a country that would not honor an order of extradition.

If you looked at this government employee’s résumé you’d learn she served in the United States Air Force where she received security clearance. After active duty in the air force, she served in the USAF Reserves. During her time with the reserves, she worked on assignments with the National Security Agency (NSA).

For 12-years she worked in Intelligence, at the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, and other equally important and sensitive federal positions.

Weeks after her arrival in Mexico, the U.S. Marshal Service located her and her daughter. They served her a concealment of a minor from a custodian arrest warrant. In the seizure of her belongings, officials found a written message to Russian officials stressing the urgency to ship them items from her life’s work before they were seized and destroyed along with other secret-level information. The authorities returned the young girl to her father.

The Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division said, “[The defendant] betrayed the trust of the American people.…”

In federal court, she pleaded guilty to Willful Retention of National Defense Information and International Parental Kidnapping. The judge sentenced her to more than eight years in federal prison for the National Defense crime and three years in federal prison for the International Parental Kidnapping. The sentences to be served at the same time—concurrently.

When she’s released, she’ll be in her fifties and her daughter will be a teenager.

What are your thoughts about this case? Join the conversation on the website. We talk about true-crime and books.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Air Force Times