Naval Submarine Base New London Servicemember Sentenced to Prison for Taking Unauthorized Photos

GROTON, CT -- An Arlington, Vermont man will serve a year in prison for taking pictures aboard a nuclear submarine.

Kristian Saucier, 29, was sentenced Friday to 12 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release for illegally keeping photos taken inside a nuclear submarine. He also was charged with impeding the investigation of the matter, according to a release.

While on supervised release, Saucier must spend six months in home confinement with electronic monitoring and perform 100 hours of community service.

From Sept. 2007 to March 2012, Saucier served as a machinist’s mate aboard the USS Alexandria, a Navy nuclear attack submarine based at the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton.

Court documents indicate that on at least three separate dates in 2009, Saucier used the camera on his phone to take pictures of classified spaces and equipment of the submarine. He also documented the major technical components of the submarine’s propulsion system.

In January 2009, Saucier took photos of the auxiliary steam plant panel and of the reactor compartment viewed through a portal. In March of that year, Saucier took two photos that, when placed side by side, provided a panoramic array of the Maneuvering Compartment.

In July of that year, Saucier took two photos of the reactor head configuration of the nuclear reactor and a view of the reactor compartment from within that compartment. He had a secret clearance and knew that the photos depicted classified material, and that he was not authorized to take them.

The investigation began in March 2012 when Saucier’s phone was found at a waste transfer station in Hampton, Conn. He was interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Naval Criminal Investigative Service in July 2012 and confronted with the classified images from his phone.

Saucier later returned to his home and immediately destroyed a laptop computer, a personal camera and the camera’s memory card. Pieces of a laptop computer were subsequently found in the woods on a Connecticut property owned by a member of Saucier’s family.

Saucier was arrested on May 28, 2015, and pleaded guilty on May 27, 2016, to unauthorized possession and retention of national defense information. He was ordered to report to prison on Oct. 12, 2016.