An NSA contractor, who was arrested in August last year on charges of illegally copying and removing confidential documents from the agency, has been indicted on 20 counts and may face a jail term of up to 20 years.
The arrest of Harold Martin was announced in October 2016. He has been charged with wilfully retaining national defence information.
Martin, 52, is expected to make his first appearance in court next Tuesday in Baltimore, Maryland, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. He was working for Booz Allen Hamilton at the time of his arrest.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton before he disappeared in 2013 and surfaced in Hong Kong. He is now in Moscow.
{loadposition sam08}The indictment listed 20 documents which Martin allegedly stole. One is said to be a document about US planning and operations on global terrorism while another is a user's guide for an tool used to collect intelligence.
Another two documents listed are concerned with US military capability and its lacunae.
However, there is no allegation that he shared any of the material with anybody else.
Martin is accused of theft of government information going back to 1996. Prosecutors say he was employed by seven private companies and assigned to top secret projects for some government agencies.