Former NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Taking Classified Information

The US Justice Department announced that that between 2010 and 2015 an NSA developer took documents and writings from the agency that contained top secret information.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A former developer at the National Security Agency from the US state of Maryland pleaded guilty to taking national defense information, the US Justice Department said in a press release.

"Nghia Hoang Pho, 67, of Ellicott City, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to willful retention of national defense information," the release said on Friday.

The Justice Department said that between 2010 and 2015, Pho took documents and writings from the NSA that contained information classified at both the Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information levels.

Pho faces up to ten years in prison, and is scheduled to appear in court for sentencing in April.

Earlier, former NSA officer Bill Binney told Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik that congressional intelligence committees, FISA courts, and the administration have no real control of what happens inside the US intelligence community.

In September, a California cybersecurity company told the government it had stumbled upon unprotected National Security Agency and US Army Intelligence and Security Command data relating to communications systems out in the open online.