Sailor gets 1-year sentence for photos of sub

Kristian Saucier. Kristian Saucier. Photo: Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo Photo: Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Sailor gets 1-year sentence for photos of sub 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

BRIDGEPORT — A federal judge sentenced a Vermont man to a year in prison Friday for unlawfully keeping photos he took of the propulsion system of a nuclear attack submarine while serving aboard the vessel.

U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill said he found sentencing guidelines calling for 63 months in prison and a hefty fine “unhelpful’’ because they included incidents of espionage and treason, which were not involved in this case.

Underhill told Kristian Saucier, 28, of Arlington, Vt., that he did not believe that Saucier had passed the photos on to a foreign government or that he was paid to take them, but that the offense was very serious nonetheless, because of the risk it created for the U.S. military.

Saucier took 14 photos that together showed the entire reactor area and propulsion system of the USS Alexandria, a U.S. Navy Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine based at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton.

On at least three separate dates in 2009, Saucier used the camera on his personal cell phone to take the photographs, each time taking more detailed closeups of classified spaces, instruments and equipment. “The sequence of the photos is disturbing,’’ the judge said to Saucier, “and if I thought you had transmitted them to a foreign power that would be treason and we should throw away the key.’’

The cell phone with the photos was found in a landfill in the New London area in 2012, three years after they were taken, and a former U.S. Navy sailor there realized that they showed classified areas and turned the phone over to the FBI and the Navy Criminal Investigation Service.

By then, Saucier had been transferred to the Naval Support Activity Base in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Although still officially in the Navy, he has been under home confinement for the past 18 months and faces a dishonorable discharge from the service, court officials said.

He will also serve three months of supervised release when he is discharged from prison, the first six months under home confinement. Underhill said he will recommend that Saucier be sent to a minimum security prison camp, as close to his home as possible.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vanessa Richards argued that the photos did not represent a momentary lapse in judgment on the machinist mate’s part, but a thought-out plan that involved sneaking into areas of the submarine he was not permitted in, hiding from a sentry on one occasion and convincing another that he wanted the photos as a keepsake “to show his children someday.

“But he had no children, no wife or girlfriend at that time, and he was not in any of the photos,’’ the prosecutor noted. “What kind of keepsakes would they be? Why not a photo of him at his bunk?’’

Richards also noted that while Saucier had pleaded guilty in May, his mother has been attempting to raise money for his legal defense on a GoFundMe page, claiming an “injustice’’ had been done to her son by overzealous prosecutors.

After Saucier was interviewed by the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service in July 2012, Saucier destroyed a laptop computer, a personal camera and the camera’s memory card. Pieces of a laptop computer were subsequently found in the woods on a property in Connecticut owned by a member of Saucier’s family.

Victor Faulk, the chief security officer for the Navy’s nuclear program, said the photos Saucier took would be of high value to an opposing foreign government, and that the devices photographed put the U.S. military a decade ahead of other countries.

FBI Special Agent Gary Hoover, who serves in the agency’s counter-intelligence unit, testified Friday that Saucier was not cooperative with investigators and had disabled the GPS in his phone to elude surveillance. The defendant also had as many as six phones, at least two of them active, and had moved the classified photos from the phone’s memory card to its hard drive.

Saucier also had $30,000 in cash in his home, had marital problems and debts, had been described as disgruntled by some shipmates and took a sudden trip to Mexico, “with a phone that did not have international calling capabilities,’’ the FBI agent testified.

Derrick Hogan, the defendant’s attorney, got Hoover to admit that Saucier had a clean service record, including two good conduct medals, and that several other sailors who had served with him had written letters in Saucier’s defense.

Saucier was indicted in May on one count of unauthorized retention of defense information, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000, and one count of obstruction of justice, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

The obstruction of justice charge was dropped in court at the sentencing on Friday.