Harold Martin reportedly spent several years working in NSA's elite hacking unit, known as Tailored Access Operations. Here, the NSA campus in Fort Meade, MD is pictured. | AP Photo Ex-NSA contractor accused of hoarding classified info to plead guilty

A former National Security Agency contractor accused of stealing a massive quantity of classified information over two decades has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of illegal retention of national security information.

The ex-NSA worker, Harold Martin, 53, however, has not reached a full agreement with prosecutors to resolve the 20 felony charges he was indicted on after being arrested in 2016 during a raid of his Maryland home.


The move appears to be a gamble by Martin's defense that the government will conclude that a trial on the remaining charges is unnecessary, particularly given the possibility that it will disclose sensitive details about the capabilities of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

Martin, who's been held without bail since his arrest nearly a year and a half ago, could face a sentence of to up to 10 years on the charge to which he is offering to plead guilty.

U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Garbis, who sits in Baltimore, has scheduled a Jan. 22 hearing to receive Martin’s plea.

Prosecutors said in a court filing that sentencing guidelines will call for Martin to receive the full 10 years. However, government lawyers have agreed to postpone sentencing until all other counts are resolved — an arrangement which suggests some possibility the other charges could be dropped.

Martin reportedly spent several years working in NSA's elite hacking unit, known as Tailored Access Operations. Investigators initially suspected his removal of classified files from NSA headquarters led to a public disclosure of U.S. hacking tools released online by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers.

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However, prosecutors have never formally accused Martin of a role in that hack or alleged that information he took from the NSA somehow made its way to the Shadow Brokers.

A statement of facts prosecutors drafted about the single count Martin is offering to plead guilty to says the particular classified document at issue in that charge is "a March 2014 NSA leadership briefing outlining the development and future plans for a specific NSA organization."

"The information contained within this document related to United States military and naval establishments and related activities of national preparedness, as well as the defense of the United States against its enemies," prosecutors said.

At early court hearings in the case, officials said they seized more than 50 terabytes of data from Martin's home, along with thousands of pages of hard copy documents, many of them classified as top secret.

Martin's attorneys had no immediate comment on the plea offer.

During unsuccessful efforts to get Martin out of jail, Martin's defense team portrayed him as a well-intentioned, but socially awkward patriot, who meant no harm by gathering the information at his home over a period of years. Federal public defender Jim Wyda called Martin "a compulsive hoarder," who believed he was making technical breakthroughs that his colleagues did not always appreciate.

"There's nothing to indicate Hal Martin is a traitor," Wyda said at an October 2016 hearing.

