NSA Employee From Ellicott City Imprisoned Over Classified Info

BALTIMORE, MD — An Ellicott City resident who worked for the National Security Agency was sentenced Tuesday to more than five years in prison after federal investigators said that he took home classified documents from work that put national security at risk.

Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, of Ellicott City, pleaded guilty to willfully retaining classified national defense information, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

Pho worked as a developer for the NSA's Tailored Access Operations starting in 2006, according to his plea agreement. The unit handles intelligence collection from foreign networks and prevents unauthorized activity within the Department of Defense computer networks for the United States and its allies. In his position within the agency, prosecutors said Pho had access to classified special projects related to national defense.

Pho held various security clearances such as top secret and top secret - sensitive compartmented information, according to officials. He removed "massive troves of highly classified national defense information without authorization, which he kept at his residence," prosecutors said.

“Pho’s intentional, reckless, and illegal retention of highly classified information over the course of almost five years placed at risk our intelligence community’s capabilities and methods, rendering some of them unusable," Assistant Attorney General Demers said in a statement. "Today’s sentence reaffirms the expectations that the government places on those who have sworn to safeguard our nation’s secrets."

Despite receiving trainings regarding sensitive document handling and signing non-disclosure agreements to show that he understood, officials said Pho took national defense information, in digital and hard copy form, to his home in Maryland, where he kept it in a number of locations.

“Removing and retaining such highly classified material displays a total disregard of Pho’s oath and promise to protect our nation’s national security,” United States Attorney Robert K. Hur said in a statement issued Tuesday. “As a result of his actions, Pho compromised some of our country’s most closely held types of intelligence, and forced NSA to abandon important initiatives to protect itself and its operational capabilities, at great economic and operational cost.”

Pho, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Vietnam, took the documents home from 2010 to 2015, officials said.

"This case is a clarion call to all security clearance holders to follow the law and policy regarding classified information storage," FBI Baltimore Special Agent in Charge Gordon B. Johnson said in a statement. "The FBI will leave no stone unturned to investigate those who compromise or mishandle classified information."

He noted the importance of security in the intelligence community.

"We cannot have a functioning intelligence community without the protection of sources and methods, and taking classified information and placing it in a vulnerable setting has profound and often disastrous consequences," Johnson said. "The privilege of working for the U.S. intelligence community requires strict adherence to laws governing the lawful secrecy of its work."

After serving his 66-month prison sentence, Pho will be on three years of supervised probation.

Pho is now the third Ellicott City man accused of leaking top-secret government information. NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, 35, also lived in Ellicott City until he fled to Hong Kong.

James A. Wolfe, 57, of Ellicott City, was accused in June of lying to FBI agents about his relationships with three reporters, including sending them encrypted messages, and about sharing classified information with two reporters while he was director of security of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

• Ellicott City Man Indicted On Charges Of Lying To FBI
• NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Has Strong Maryland Ties

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