Posted on 12/04/2006 10:30:42 AM PST by SmithL
NORFOLK, Va. - A sailor accused of stealing a Navy laptop and peddling its classified contents to an undisclosed foreign government pleaded guilty Monday to espionage, desertion and other charges.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann, 22, of Salem, Ore., faces a sentence of life in prison without parole, a dishonorable discharge from the Navy and forfeiture of all pay.
Under a plea agreement, Weinmann pleaded guilty to one count each of espionage, desertion, failing to properly safeguard and store classified information, copying classified information, communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it, and stealing and destroying a government computer.
Weinmann pleaded guilty to trying to transmit classified information related to national defense to a representative of a foreign government on Oct. 19, 2005 while he was in or near Vienna, Austria.
He pleaded not guilty to two additional espionage counts, one accusing him of giving classified information to an agent of a foreign government in March of 2005 in Bahrain and another accusing him of trying to deliver confidential information on March 19, 2006 in Mexico City.
Weinmann told the judge, who had yet to accept the plea, that he deserted the Navy in July 2005 because the service did not meet his expectations.
"I had a very idealized view, basically what amounted to a World War II Navy," Weinmann told the judge.
Weinmann, a fire control technician, had been stationed on the Connecticut-based submarine USS Albuquerque.
He said he did not report for duty aboard his submarine on July 3, 2005. He moved to Austria and never planned to come back to the United States, but changed his mind and was arrested in March at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Weinmann told the judge he believed his actions could hurt morale and security.
"I believe if it fell into the wrong hand, sir, the information could be detrimental to the United States," Weinmann said.
He said he made copies of classified material on a laptop computer, which he brought with him to Austria. He said he printed one document and copied other information onto CDs and said he had unclassified, classified and secret information sitting on a table in his apartment in Austria.
The military has not said what it believes Weinmann might have sought in exchange for the information.
Nonstop GMT for the rest of his life.
Perhaps the counter-intelligence guys don't want "potential espionage threat A" to know that "potential espionage threat B" was trying to steal this info.
Have you ever seen a gold deterrent pin?
I was in the exchange once and saw a grisled old master chief. I saw the pin for the first and only time and had to ask about it. If I remember correctly it was for about 25 deterrent patrols, every sea tour he had was on a boomer.
Better him than me.....
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing...Both the name of the sailor and the Fed's apparent reluctance to name the intended recipient of the data leads me to believe that perhaps either our ally is snooping in our underwear drawer again, or at the very least, this traitor hoped they were...
I got out of the Navy's TS / SCI world about 6 years ago, but I agree that if submarines treat classified information the way shore installations do, there's very little this kid could have gotten away with.
The Walker spy ring turned the security world of the U.S. Navy upside down. There isn't a lot of truly harmful stuff floating around for just any sailor to pick up and sell...It's not that there aren't plenty of secrets, but the armed services went a long way toward ensuring that the only way anything truly damaging will get compromised is when Ted Kennedy has a drink.
One of the more recent endeavors by the intelligence services has been toward centralizinig classified material and making the entire library accessible via secure "internet." If the laptop that was stolen is one was capable of browsing the libraries of the various intel organs, it's compromise *could* be very troublesome, but it would have to be documents saved off onto the local hard drive and would not represent a persistent hole through which classified data were escaping. Even then, workstations and user accounts are locked down pretty tight with no opportunity for uncleared folks to just hop on them and surf away...Without some gross negligence.
It boggles the mind that the traitor and pervert, Bob Hanssen, was awarded a pension by the FBI for his services AFTER he was convicted of extensive espionage for the Russians.
While important, this is still not SCI stuff we're talking about. You read about that in the NYT. :^(
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Its been several years, but there was a big difference in how SECRET and TS got handled. SECRET got locked up inport, in various pookahs - bench & wall lockers, with a standard padlock, nothing anymore secure than what a divisions tools & maintenance records would be kept. At sea, the whole boat is authorized stowage since everyone onboard had SECRET clearance, so all the locks were removed.
Online access via a computer and getting rid of the pubs would be a great improvement.
TS was completely different and CMS was different still with the TPI rule.
There were lots of NWPs covering dozens of topics, but we joked that Moscow probably already had a set, inasmuch that if we ever went against the book, some GRU analyst would undoubtedly say - once again the Americans show they don't follow their published tactical procedures. But thats what made things fun in the cold war.....
Execute all Traitors.
"Hmm.... I wonder what country THAT was."
Some news reports I looked up think it may have been Russia. He passed the data in Bahrain.
Not disputing the classification breach but a SECRET compromise still does harm to our nation...I was a radioman on two SSBNs; and it still burns me up to know what John Walker did (in knowing what kind of damage could be done).
Swing the fool from the yard arm. A traitor's end for this fool. Make an example out of the idiot, and use him as a christmas tree ornament.
I say this, because if I had done such a foolish thing, they would have executed me.
SS
Why don't you grace us all with the impact Public Schools had on the other 99.999% of the Navy?
Or do we only get one stupid comment per thread?
Only an idiot would try and pin this on public schools.
Never saw a gold one...but we had a CSC (former steward) who wore a WWII war patrol pin. I believe (but can be certain in this age of uncertain memory) that he was on the Barb with Gene Fluckey (I do remember that he went bananas in the damage control trainer up in NLON when they simulated depth charges--first time I ever saw PTSS up close and personal!)
Who knows, could have been even a third party buyer/seller for all we know.
I think that is what he deserves.
BUMP
No, only an idiot would deny the obvious. Do you work in the industry or something?
It is idiots who allow ideological rhetoric to overcome their good sense. The FACT is that almost all of our military is educated in public schools. The FACT is that public schools provide an excellent education for millions of students. The FACT is most of the problems in them is because parents have tuned out, or should never have had children in the first place having no spouse.
My late wife taught in them but I have not. You cannot find a harder working or more effective teacher than she was. Public schools are run by locally elected officials. One could not get closer to the people.
My public school educated elder son is a Nuke on the USS Ohio and anyone who graduated from Power School like him and his public school educated classmates are living, breathing refutations of that crap too commonly spewed here.
You are rightfully proud of your son, and I'm sure he's a fine young man.
Now, when you've done eight years of sea duty and have an instructor tour under your belt you can presume to tell me that this punk is some sort of rare exception. He's not. I've served with, and attempted to teach, many of his ilk. The only thing that makes him exceptional is the crime he committed.
You would be surprised at the number of dirtbags we filtered out before they could be inflicted upon the fleet, and the number we managed to get rid of after they got there. But you shouldn't be. You can heap all of the blame on bad parenting if you want, but I've seen enough despicable kids come from decent homes to know better.
Kids are woefully unprepared coming out of high school to be anything but full-time college students or professional athletes. They demand to be treated with a respect they've yet to earn. They're conditioned to be spoon-fed information and that there are no consequences for their actions. It seeps out of the public edication system an into basic training and "A" and "C" schools. Heck, I remember having to revise 36 weeks of technical curriculum to remove all gender-specific references and anything else that might hurt someone's feelings (like big words). Technical manuals have to be written to a sixth grade reading level so that kids can understand them.
So get off of your high horse and realize that this idiot kid is a symptom of a much larger problem.
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