The Ministry of Justice announced that the IT specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested on Thursday and was charged with trying to provide secret information to a friendly foreign government.
The FBI said that he started an investigation into the 28-year-old Nathan Lach in March after receiving advice to provide secret information to a foreign government because-according to Tipster-Laatsch did not agree or correspond to the values of this administration “and was ready to share” completed intelligence products, some inaccurate intelligence, and other video documents. “
The foreign country is not identified by trying to contact the court documents.
A seal of the Ministry of Justice appears on the platform before a press conference in the Ministry of Justice building, March 21, 2024, in Washington, DC
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
In contacts with a secret agent with the FBI, which is advancing in the role of foreign country, Laatsch has copied secret information to a notebook in his office over a period of three days.
A video clip from inside the DIA facility showed him where Laatsch worked in writing multiple pages of observations, which he folded in the squares and hid on his socks, according to a written statement submitted in the American District Court of the Eastern Region in Virginia.
See another employee of Dia Laatsch puts the pages of multiple books at the bottom of his lunch box, according to the written statement.
Then the FBI performed an operation on May 1, in which Laatsch agreed to drop the information classified through Thumb Drive in a specific place in a public park in North Virginia, according to shipping documents.
The drive is alleged to have information appointed to each of the secret and most secret classification levels. Laatsch called the agent about a week later and said he is interested in citizenship for the country whose name has not been revealed because “he does not expect things to improve here in the long run.”
After that, Laatsch again tried to prepare secret information to provide it to the agent and in an operation earlier on Thursday, he arrived at a site in North Virginia where he was detained.
The arrest of Laatsch comes amid wider concern among current and former intelligence officials that individuals who have access to high -value information may use the current moment of dismantling and dislocation in the Intel community to try to sell information to foreign governments for profit.
Laatsch, which was appointed by the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2019, recently worked as a data scientist and information technology specialist in information security in the Agency’s internal threats department, according to court documents.
Online court records are not included after Laatsch lawyer.
