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A man from Ellicott City and former National Security Agency employee, who pleaded guilty in December to having removed classified documents, was sentenced Tuesday to five and a half years in prison in a police room. Federal hearing in Baltimore.
Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, who withdrew documents over a five-year period ending in 2015, said during his hearing before the US District Court that he wanted additional time to assess the performance of his employees. his team had received.
"Assessing the performance of your employees is not enough," he said. "It's not your turn now."
He will serve time for deliberately withholding classified national defense information in a medium security federal prison in Cumberland effective January 7. It will be followed by three years of supervised release.
Ann Pho sobbed and stopped several times to recollect herself as she told the judge about her 33-year-old husband, who she called "the main provider of our family and our four children, emotionally and financially. "
Pho worked at the Fort Meade agency headquarters from 2006 to 2016. According to his agreement with prosecutors, he worked on "highly classified, specialized projects and had access to computer systems, programs and government information, including classified information ".
The former NSA employee is the last person in recent years to have found sensitive information about national security.
Reality Winner, a former linguist and intelligence contractor from the Air Force, pleaded guilty last June to having leaked a top-secret government report on Russian piracy. She was sentenced to five years in prison in August. The case of Harold Martin, a former NSA contractor accused of keeping plenty of information at his home in Glen Burnie, is expected to be tried in June 2019.
Pho is not accused of distributing the information he has taken home, but hackers have stolen classified information on his computer, according to the New York Times.
After hearing the arguments of the lawyers and the moving testimony of Pho's wife, one of his sons and his best friend, US District Judge George L. Russell III stated that he had difficulties with this case.
According to the judge, the sentence was to deter such behavior by other officials, the fact that the former director general of the CIA, David Petraeus, pleaded guilty to a charge of a similar case
"It was not an easy affair for me to decide," Russell said.
The public condemnation on Tuesday afternoon followed an earlier part of the hearing, which contained classified information and was closed to the public and the press.
During the public portion of the hearing, deputy attorney Thomas P. Windom, who sued the case, argued that the "huge treasure" found in two Pho homes went far beyond the projects on which he was working. any summary that he was building.
Mr. Windom explained Pho's explanation of why he had brought the documents home "in blatant contradiction with the facts". Pho had to undergo a quasi-annual training on the handling of classified information, he added.
"The ultimate point is that the accused knew exactly what he was doing," Windom said. "He knew what would happen if the NSA discovered. … He did not care. He took it anyway.
Prosecutors had requested an eight-year prison sentence, which was the first federal sentencing guideline for this offense. US lawyer Robert K. Hur described the case as "remarkable because of the sheer amount of classified information."
Pho's lawyer, Robert C. Bonsib, noted that a thorough investigation by the federal government found no evidence that his client had ever attempted or intended to release classified information.
"It was not there," Bonsib said.
"I can not imagine having to spend days without him," she added.
Their son, Michael Pho, said last year that his father's name had become public "felt like a life in his life". He stated that his father was a committed public servant who had suffered a heart attack and returned to work a few days later.
"We have been tried by the court of public opinion," he said. "All he has done well – all the good he does – will always be overshadowed."
During his testimony, Pho told Russell that he was "so happy" to be offered the job at the NSA: "That was exactly what I wanted."
The rest of his team was promoted after a project they worked on received a grand prize from the head of the agency, he said. But his broken English and his difficulty in socializing with the others in the office held him back, and he just needed more time to work on his file.
"I did not betray the United States," he said.
Although Pho may not have shared the information, the judge could not have been unaware that he had illegally removed it from the NSA premises.
"We would not be here if he had just left the documents in the office," Russell said.
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