WASHINGTON—A U.S. counterterrorism analyst was arrested Wednesday at the Defense Intelligence Agency where he worked and charged with leaking classified information to two journalists for NBC and CNBC, the Justice Department said.

The arrest is the latest in an accelerated prosecution by the Trump administration of government employees accused of sharing sensitive information with the media, a crackdown that grew under the Obama administration and has alarmed press-freedom advocates.

Henry Kyle Frese, 30 years old, accessed a classified intelligence report about China’s weapons systems last year and provided information from it to two journalists, including one with whom he was romantically involved, according to newly unsealed court documents and public records.

Mr. Frese has been charged with two counts of willful transmission of national defense information, a felony charge that carries the possibility of a lengthy prison term.

The journalists aren’t named in the indictment, but they are identifiable as Amanda Macias, a reporter for CNBC, and Courtney Kube, a reporter for NBC. Public tweets cited in the court filings correspond to tweets sent by Ms. Macias and Ms. Kube in July.


Neither journalist immediately responded to requests for comment, nor did NBC or CNBC. Ms. Kube is a veteran reporter who covers national security and the military, while Ms. Macias has been with CNBC’s Washington bureau, where she covers the Pentagon, since 2018.

“Frese was caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information for personal gain,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for the national security division.

Officials declined to explain what specific impact, if any, the disclosures had on national security.

At least five former U.S. government employees or contractors—including a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and an intelligence analyst—have been prosecuted in recent months for providing sensitive information to the media.


Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press said his organization would monitor the Frese case closely.

“Aggressive leak prosecutions directly impair newsgathering by dissuading sources with newsworthy information about matters of public concern from speaking to reporters,” he said.

Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the case wasn’t meant to send a message to journalists but to “leakers.”

Ms. Macias and Mr. Frese were in a romantic relationship, according to the indictment as well as social media posts reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Frese provided additional information to Ms. Kube, who is more senior than Ms. Macias, to help Ms. Macias’s career, prosecutors alleged.


While Mr. Frese—who had the highest security clearance available, Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information—worked on counterterrorism matters, he accessed information unrelated to his job, prosecutors said.

The court filings allege that Mr. Frese shared classified national defense information that was used for an article identifiable as a May 2, 2018, report written by Ms. Macias about China quietly installing missile systems on fortified islands in the South China Sea.

An affidavit by FBI special agent Donny Kim, released Wednesday in connection with the case, alleged that eight articles by Ms. Macias included information contained in five classified intelligence reports.

On at least one occasion, Mr. Frese retweeted Ms. Macias when she promoted her story that allegedly was based on his disclosures, prosecutors said.


The FBI also intercepted a phone call Mr. Frese had with Ms. Kube on Sept. 24, in which he allegedly gave her information contained in two classified reports, according to the indictment. Two weeks later, on Tuesday, a grand jury returned the indictment against Mr. Frese.

Mr. Frese is scheduled to make an initial appearance before a federal judge on Thursday.

The Trump administration has publicly described a stepped-up effort to prosecute leaks of classified information to reporters.

A former U.S. intelligence analyst, Daniel Hale, was arrested in May and charged with providing classified information to a reporter at the online news publication the Intercept in 2014 about U.S. counterterrorism operations, including against al Qaeda. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in December.

A former U.S. intelligence community contractor, Reality Winner, was sentenced last year to more than five years in prison—the longest such sentence ever—for sending classified information detailing a suspected 2016 Russian hack of a Florida election vendor, also to the Intercept.

A former FBI agent, Terry Albury, was sentenced last year to four years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking to the Intercept in 2016 and 2017 information about the FBI’s informant-recruitment tactics and efforts to identify political extremists.

A former Senate staffer was sentenced to two months in jail last year, after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with journalists, including one with whom he was involved romantically.

And a Treasury Department official was charged last year with disclosing a trove of information about sensitive financial transactions to a reporter at BuzzFeed News. She has pleaded not guilty and is set to face trial in January.

—Jesse Naranjo contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com, Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com