A former Pentagon counterterrorism analyst was sentenced to more than two years in prison for sharing national security secrets with two journalists and a consultant, the New York Times reports. Former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Henry Frese, 32, had pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to willful transmission of top-secret national defense information about foreign countries’ weapons systems. “Frese repeatedly passed classified information to a reporter, sometimes in response to her requests, all for personal gain,” said John Demers, the Justice Department’s top national security official.
Frese’s arrest was part of the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on illegal leaks of classified information, a push that dates to the second half of the George W. Bush administration and intensified under former President Barack Obama. Frese admitted to sharing information from April 2018 to September 2019 with Amanda Macias, a national security reporter at CNBC, who was Frese’s girlfriend and shared a home with him. Macias published eight articles that contained classified information related to weapons systems containing sensitive material taken from classified intelligence reports, prosecutors. The other journalist was Courtney Kube, a reporter for NBC News covering the Pentagon.