Retired Air Force officer will get 3 years in federal jail for holding categorised paperwork

TAMPA, Fla. — A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer was sentenced Thursday to a few years in federal jail for holding categorised paperwork at his residence and different unauthorized places.

Robert Birchum, 55, was sentenced in Tampa federal court docket, in keeping with court docket information. He pleaded responsible in February to unlawfully possessing and retaining categorised paperwork regarding the nationwide protection of the United States. Birchum was additionally fined $25,000.

According to the plea settlement, Birchum, who retired in 2018 as a lieutenant colonel, served in varied positions in intelligence over his 29-year profession, together with these requiring him to work with categorised intelligence data for the Joint Special Operations Command, the Special Operations Command and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In 2017, regulation enforcement officers found that Birchum knowingly eliminated greater than 300 categorised recordsdata or paperwork, together with greater than 30 gadgets marked high secret, from licensed places, prosecutors mentioned. Birchum saved these categorised supplies in his residence, his abroad officer’s quarters and a storage pod in his driveway.

Prosecutors particularly famous that Birchum possessed two paperwork on a thumb drive present in his residence that contained data regarding the National Security Agency’s capabilities and strategies of assortment and targets’ vulnerabilities. Their unauthorized launch might have induced exceptionally grave injury to the nationwide safety of the United States, officers mentioned.