MINNESOTA
A former FBI agent admitted to leaking classified national defense information, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Former FBI Agent Terry J. Albury plead guilty Tuesday in Minnesota in connection with his unauthorized disclosure and retention of classified national defense information, according to authorities.
“Today, Terry Albury admitted to violating his oath to protect our country by disclosing to a reporter classified information that, as an FBI agent, he was entrusted to protect,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for National Security. “Albury admitted that his actions put America at risk. As this prosecution demonstrates, we will not waiver in our commitment to pursue and hold accountable government officials who violate their obligations to protect our nation’s secrets and break the laws they have sworn to uphold.”
According to the New York Times, public court documents do not name the news organization to which Mr. Albury gave the documents, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to identify it. However, an Associated Press report noted that the date and subject matter of one of the documents correspond with those of a document cited in a Jan. 31, 2017, article by The Intercept, the New York Times reported.
Albury plead guilty to one count of making an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawful retention of national defense information.
Albury is facing up to 10 years in prison per count, according to officials.
“Terry Albury betrayed the trust bestowed upon him by the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Tracy Doherty-McCormick. “Today’s guilty plea should serve as a reminder to those who are entrusted with classified information that the Justice Department will hold them accountable.”
Albury, 39, worked as an FBI Special Agent in the Minneapolis field office at the time of the disclosures.
At the time, Albury also worked as a liaison with Customs and Border Protection at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
In connection with his FBI employment, Albury held a Top Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, and his daily duties provided him access to sensitive and classified FBI and other U.S. government information.
According to court documents, beginning in 2016 and continuing through August 2017, Albury knowingly and willfully disclosed national defense information, classified at the Secret level, to a reporter.
Albury employed methods to avoid detection, including printing documents that he created by cutting and pasting portions of an original document into a new document so as to avoid leaving a record of having printed the original, classified document.
Albury also accessed documents on a classified computer and took pictures of the computer screen in order to photograph certain classified documents.
Those additional classified documents were recovered on an electronic storage device found during a search of his home.
As set forth in the plea agreement, Albury was never authorized to retain the documents at issue at his residence or to transmit them to any person not entitled to receive them.
Albury knew that he was not authorized to remove documents containing National Defense Information and classified information from secure locations. He also knew that he was not authorized to retain them at his residence or to transmit them to any person not authorized to receive them.