Edward Snowden, who has mounted an effort to receive a presidential pardon, weighed in on the new revelation, calling it "huge" and questioning the nature of the charges. | Getty A new Snowden? NSA contractor charged with stealing classified info The arrested contractor worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, the same company that employed Edward Snowden.

The U.S. government confirmed a potentially wide-ranging breach of classified information Wednesday, raising serious questions about the steps federal agencies and contractor Booz Allen Hamilton took to prevent leaks in the wake of the Edward Snowden's seismic revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.

The Justice Department announced that Booz Allen employee Harold Martin III was secretly arrested in August after the FBI allegedly found highly classified information at his Maryland home.


Martin, 51, was charged with felony theft of government information and misdemeanor unauthorized retention of classified information. He appeared at a closed hearing in federal court in Baltimore on Aug. 29 and has been in government custody since, according to court records.

During a court-ordered search of Martin's home, the FBI "seized thousands of pages of documents and dozens of computers or other digital storage devices and media," prosecutor Zachary Myers said in a court filing made public Wednesday afternoon. "The digital media contained many terabytes of information that must be reviewed by appropriate authorities."

Myers did not estimate what percentage of the records or the data was classified or obtained from the NSA, where Martin worked under a Booz Allen contract. The New York Times said he was suspected of removing source code from the NSA developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments.

In the wake of Snowden's disclosures about the NSA's snooping at home and abroad, the spy agency and other federal agencies sought to step up their controls on sensitive information. Limits were adopted on the use of digital media, such as thumb drives, in many workspaces. NSA announced it adopted new "two-man key" policies designed to prevent a single employee from absconding with a vast trove of data, as Snowden did.

It's unclear how much information authorities believe Martin took, but a security breach of any substantial scope is sure to prompt another round of second-guessing about whether "insider threat" reforms instituted by the Obama administration and the NSA were adequate.





Booz Allen said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that the company had fired Martin.



"When Booz Allen learned of the arrest of one of its employees by the FBI, we immediately reached out to the authorities to offer our total cooperation in their investigation, and we fired the employee," the contractor said in a regulatory filing. "We continue to cooperate fully with the government on its investigation into this serious matter. There have been no material changes to our client engagements as a result of this matter. Booz Allen is a 102-year-old company, and the alleged conduct does not reflect our core values."

Booz Allen had also employed Snowden when he abruptly departed his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii and revealed that he had removed a massive trove of records detailing NSA surveillance operations around the world as well as some programs gathering information in the United States.

An NSA spokesperson referred all questions about the case to prosecutors.

The delay since Martin's initial court appearance strongly suggests he is cooperating with the government. Normally, federal defendants are entitled to be indicted or released within 30 days of their arraignment. Martin agreed last month to waive that, giving prosecutors until March 1 to indict him.

Prosecutors told the court the parties were "exploring the possibility of resolving this matter prior to presentation of the case to the grand jury," a phrase which typically refers to plea negotiations. They also said the matter was complicated because defense lawyers lacked the security clearances needed to look at the materials seized from Martin.

In a statement, Martin's lawyers said he's a Navy veteran and harbors no ill will towards the U.S.

"At this point, these are mere allegations. There is no evidence that Hal Martin intended to betray his country" federal defenders Jim Wyda and Deborah Boardman said. "What we do know is that Hal Martin loves his family and his country. He served our nation honorably in the United States Navy, and he has devoted his entire career to serving and protecting America."

What Martin's intentions were with the classified documents and files said to have been found in his home remained murky Wednesday. The court complaint does not allege that he intended to disclose the information to anyone.

FBI agents executed search warrants at Martin's Glen Burnie, Md. residence on Aug. 27 and found sensitive information classified up to the "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information" level, the Justice Department said. The official announcement indicated that Martin allegedly took information that could have a broad-based impact on government operations.

"Martin at first denied, and later when confronted with specific documents, admitted he took documents and digital files from his work assignment to his residence and vehicle that he knew were classified," FBI Special Agent Jeremy Bucalo wrote. "Martin stated that he did not have authorization to retain the materials at his residence or in his vehicle. Martin stated that he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized."

The extent of the information Martin allegedly took and its sensitivity — beyond the classification level —remained unclear Wednesday. The Times reported he was suspected of taking "source code"— the basic building blocks of computer programs used by the NSA.

"These documents were produced through sensitive government sources, methods and capabilities, which are critical to a wide variety of national security issues," the Justice Department statement said.

Martin's August arrest came little more than a week after a mysterious hacker group known as “Shadow Brokers” made public a cache of source code for apparent NSA hacking tools.

Cybersecurity experts who reviewed the code behind the tools believed them to be authentic. At least one of the leaked tools appeared to comport with details in an NSA instruction manual that had been stolen by Snowden.

“All of their capabilities have been operationally blown,” Jon Miller, chief research officer at digital security firm Cylance, told POLITICO shortly after the Shadow Brokers leak. “It’s the biggest setback in the history of the U.S. cyber program.”

However, it’s unclear whether Martin's arrest is connected to the Shadow Brokers hack, which some speculated was the Russian intelligence service's attempt to warn the U.S. government against retaliating for a series of election-related hacks that digital security firms have pinned on Moscow.

For one thing, the timeline laid out in the criminal complaint filed against Martin suggests the two instances were unconnected.

According to the FBI complaint, six of the classified documents Martin stole from “sensitive intelligence” were “produced by an agency in 2014," although the six are only part of what the NSA contractor allegedly took home. The code leaked by the Shadow Brokers group dates back to 2013.

At the time of Martin's arrest, investigators were concerned that he might be acting in concert with others, according to the government's motion to seal the court filings and close the courtroom to spectators.

"Federal agents are continuing their investigation, which may lead to identification of additional culpable individuals," Myers wrote Aug. 29. "Premature disclosure of the complaint could compromise the ongoing federal investigation and alert any co-conspirators or associates, which could lead these individuals to flee or destroy evidence."

While source code information could be useful to U.S. adversaries, it might not reveal the reach or scope of NSA surveillance in the way Snowden's disclosures did.

"It would appear to be very different" from the Snowden case, said former NSA official Thomas Drake, who was charged in 2010 with having classified information at his home but pled guilty the following year to a much-reduced misdemeanor of exceeding authorized use of a government computer. He received no jail time or fine.

"If you can get your hands on the source code, you can learn a lot of about how the programs work and their capabilities, but it depends on what source code you're talking about," Drake added. "You'd have to know a lot more."

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest shed little light on the Martin case, but said President Barack Obama views the issue "seriously."

"Anytime that information like this is released in the context of a criminal complaint, the federal government is reminded of how important it is to be vigilant about protecting the national security of the country and information that is relevant to our national security. So this is certainly a situation that the Department of Justice takes seriously, as evidenced by their complaint, but this is also a situation that President Obama takes quite seriously," Earnest said. "And it is a good reminder for all of us with security clearances about how important it is for us to protect sensitive national security information."

Speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Massachusetts, the head of the Justice Department's national security division, John Carlin, confirmed only the barest details about the matter, but said it should remind contractors to be vigilant about protecting classified information from misuse by rogue employees.

"We have made an arrest of an individual who was involved in taking classified information And what I think it points out for the private sector and others more generally is this problem of insider threat," Carlin said.

Snowden, who has mounted an effort to receive a presidential pardon, weighed in on the revelation on Wednesday, calling it "huge" and questioning the nature of the charges against Martin.

“Am I correct in reading they didn't charge him under the Espionage Act? Under this administration, that's a noteworthy absence,” Snowden tweeted.

Eric Geller and Madeline Conway contributed to this report.