Ex-NSA Employee gets 22 Years in Prison for Trying to Sell U.S. Secrets to Russia

A former National Security Agency employee who tried to hand America’s secrets to Russia learned just how steep the price of that betrayal can be. Jareh Sebastian Dalke, a 32-year-old Army veteran from Colorado Springs, was sentenced to 262 months — nearly 22 years — in federal prison for attempted espionage, after a sting in which the “Russian agent” he courted turned out to be an undercover FBI employee.

The case drew a blunt warning from the top of the Justice Department. “This defendant, who had sworn an oath to defend our country, believed he was selling classified national security information to a Russian agent, when in fact, he was outing himself to the FBI,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. FBI Director Christopher Wray added that the punishment “should serve as a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information that there are consequences to betraying that trust.”

A One-Month NSA Tenure With Top-Secret Access

Dalke’s window inside the intelligence community was remarkably brief. He worked at the NSA as an Information Systems Security Designer from June 6 to July 1, 2022 — less than a month — yet held a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information. Shortly after starting, he requested a nine-month leave of absence to help a family member with a medical condition; when that request was denied, he resigned. During that short tenure, he printed and improperly kept three classified documents.

According to court records, the material Dalke walked out with was not minor. It touched on sensitive U.S. defense capabilities, a threat assessment of an unnamed foreign country, and a U.S. cryptographic program — the kind of information that, in the wrong hands, could expose how the United States protects and decodes its most guarded communications.

The FBI Sting at Denver’s Union Station

Between August and September 2022, Dalke used an encrypted email account to reach out to someone he believed was a Russian agent, sending excerpts of the three documents to prove his “legitimate access and willingness to share.” The recipient was an FBI online covert employee. On or about August 26, 2022, Dalke asked for $85,000 for everything in his possession, claiming the trove would be valuable to Russia and promising more once he returned to the Washington, D.C., area. He was paid $16,499 in cryptocurrency for the initial excerpts.

The final exchange was set for September 28, 2022, at Denver’s Union Station, where the agent gave him a four-hour window to upload the files over a secure connection. Dalke arrived with his laptop and transferred five files — four containing top-secret National Defense Information, the fifth a letter that opened and closed in Russian, in which he wrote that he looked forward to “our friendship and shared benefit.” In a striking detail, that same day he had accepted a new offer to return to the NSA, which investigators feared was an attempt to regain access to still more secrets. He was arrested on the spot.

A Guilty Plea and a Judge’s Scathing Verdict

In October 2023, Dalke pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to transmit classified National Defense Information to a foreign agent. At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore did not mince words, calling the conduct “blatant,” “brazen,” and “as close to treasonous as you can get,” and describing the roughly 22-year term as “mercy” given what he viewed as a calculated decision to take the NSA job specifically to sell secrets.

His defense had asked for 14 years, arguing the information never reached a real adversary and citing mitigating factors — a traumatic brain injury, multiple suicide attempts, and childhood trauma. Dalke himself expressed remorse and said he suffered from PTSD, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, denying ideological or financial motives and pointing instead to the thrill of it. The judge questioned that account, noting the defense offered no expert testimony or hospital records to support it. Prosecutors, meanwhile, pointed to Dalke’s own words: he had told the supposed Russian contact he was roughly $237,000 in debt, wanted to “cause change,” and felt his heritage “ties back to your country.”

An Insider-Threat Cautionary Tale

The Dalke prosecution has become a textbook example of the insider-threat problem facing agencies that depend on cleared personnel. It also underscored how aggressively the FBI now runs online covert operations to intercept would-be leakers before any genuine harm is done. For readers tracking similar national-security and cybercrime stories, theAegisAlliance.com follows these cases across its Hacker News and US News sections.

As the Justice Department summarized the plea, Dalke admitted he willfully transmitted the files to the FBI covert employee intending, and believing, the information would injure the United States and benefit Russia.

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, CNN, and CBS News Colorado.