An employee at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of leaking top-secret classified information to two reporters.
Henry Kyle Frese, a 30-year-old counter-terrorism analyst at the DIA, allegedly leaked classified information to two reporters whose identities were not unveiled by authorities in 2018 and this year, one of which Frese was romantically involved with, according to the indictment.
Federal authorities say one reporter wrote eight articles stemming from at least five leaks from Frese.
While federal authorities did not reveal the identities of either reporter Frese leaked information to, a search of Frese’s Twitter profile suggests the first journalist described in the indictment, with whom Frese allegedly had a romantic relationship. The indictment says Frese retweeted the reporter just a few days after an April 27 interaction between the two. That suggests a tweet from CNBC national security reporter Amanda Macias to be the primary journalist Frese leaked classified reports to based on the criminal indictment.
Yesterday's scoop on @CNBC https://t.co/y8pScgEiUl https://t.co/3flA3zgnqU
— Amanda Macias (@amanda_m_macias) May 3, 2018
The indictment by federal prosecutors allege that Frese accessed intelligence reports starting in the spring of 2018 and provided classified information to the first journalist who lived at the same residential address located in Alexandria, Virginia, a Washington D.C. suburb in northern Virginia.
Shortly after Frese allegedly began providing classified intelligence information to the first reporter, he was asked to speak with another journalist to provide more information that was protected as secret, according to authorities.
Further analysis by The Federalist indicates the second journalist described in the indictment is likely NBC’s Courtney Kube. According to the affidavit, the second reporter worked at the same conglomerate as the first reporter but in a more senior position. The two also bylined a story together on a similar topic in July 2019.
The indictment against Frese says that in September, government surveillance caught Frese leaking information related to the nation’s defense over the phone to the second reporter.
Frese faces up to ten years in prison for the two counts of willful transmission of national defense information.
