Former NSA Employee Jareh Sebastian Dalke Gets Nearly 22 Years for Trying to Sell U.S. Secrets to Russia

Jareh Sebastian Dalke lasted 25 days at the National Security Agency, walked out with classified paper, and tried to sell it to Russia. The Russian was an FBI employee. A federal judge in Colorado called the conduct “as close to treasonous as you can get” and gave him 262 months — nearly 22 years — for attempted espionage.

Dalke, an Army veteran from Colorado Springs, held a Top Secret / SCI clearance as an Information Systems Security Designer from June 6 to July 1, 2022. He asked for nine months off to help a sick relative, was denied, and resigned. In that window he printed three classified documents: U.S. defense capabilities, a foreign threat assessment, and a cryptographic program. Between August and September 2022 he emailed excerpts from an encrypted account to someone he thought was a Russian officer, asked for $85,000, and took $16,499 in crypto for the samples. On September 28, 2022, at Denver’s Union Station, he uploaded five files — four with top-secret National Defense Information and a letter that opened and closed in Russian. That same day he had accepted an offer to go back to NSA. Agents arrested him on the platform.

A Plea, and a Judge Who Was Not Impressed

In October 2023 he pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to transmit classified NDI. Defense asked for 14 years and talked about a traumatic brain injury, suicide attempts, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and OCD. The judge, Raymond Moore, said there was no expert file to back it and called 22 years “mercy.” Dalke had told the fake Russian he was about $237,000 in debt and that his heritage “ties back to your country.” Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray used the sentencing as a billboard for insider-threat cases.

For the other side of the secrets market, see The AEGIS Alliance file on WikiLeaks’ Spy Files Russia dump and our Hacker News desk. The Justice Department summary is here.