He faced three charges including "delivering national defense information to aid a foreign government, conspiracy to deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government, and the willful retention of national defense information," the Justice Department said. Between December 2022, and August 2023, Lemma copied classified information from intelligence reports and deleted the classification markings from them, the Justice Department said. Lemma then removed the information, which was classified as 'secret' and 'top secret,' from secure facilities at the State Department. Lemma used an encrypted application to transmit classified national defense information to a foreign government official associated with a foreign country's intelligence service, the Justice Department said. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it had undertaken a "self-initiated 60-day internal security review" in which it was uncovered that its contractor "may have removed, retained and transmitted classified national defense information without authorization."

Source: Ethiopian News September 21, 2023 22:02 UTC