![]() Jonathan Toebbe would download the classified materials onto SD cards, secreting them away in peanut butter sandwiches or bubblegum packages and leaving them at predetermined locations. In December 2020, days before his stated deadline, the foreign recipient shared the letter and documents with the FBI, which then launched an investigation into the couple.įor more than a year undercover agents communicated with Jonathan Toebbe using an encrypted email service, posing as foreign agents and facilitating four document drops in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. “Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. “I apologize for this poor translation into your language,” Jonathan Toebbe wrote in that letter. In April 2020, Jonathan Toebbe sent his first letter to the unnamed government with a sampling of some of the information he had, telling the recipient to contact him by the end of the year if they wanted to purchase more information. “A critical component of national defense has been irreparably compromised.” Toebbe captured some of the most secure and sensitive information about our nuclear-powered fleet,” Houston wrote. William Houston, who commands the Navy’s Atlantic-based submarines, said in a statement to the court that Jonathan Toebbe’s attempted espionage would have threatened the country’s naval advantages. ![]() Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe’s cooperation post-guilty plea in recovering money and documents warranted the proposed sentence. Jonathan Toebbe had been smuggling out information about the Navy’s Virginia-class attack submarines, a highly-sophisticated nuclear-powered boat carrying cruise missiles that can run for 33 years without refueling. The couple has two children and no known financial problems.Groh also thought Jonathan Toebbe’s proposed sentence, between 12 1/2 and 17 1/2 years, was light considering the extent of his espionage. Diana Toebbe, accused of acting as lookout, was indefinitely suspended from her longtime job as an English teacher at the progressive Key School on Monday. spies designed to facilitate their identification and arrest." ![]() military technology with potential benefit to that government's defense capabilities, but also appears to have actively cooperated in cultivating a relationship of trust between the FBI and the alleged U.S. "What's striking to me, though, is that a foreign government not only informed the FBI about its receipt of sensitive U.S. "Although most spy cases don't involve peanut butter and Band-Aids, the facts alleged follow a familiar pattern," David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, tells The Washington Post. "While some experts speculated France could have been the target, French officials said they were not involved in the incident," the Times reports. "That would suggest it's probably not China or Russia, necessarily." And Toebbe's messages indicate the country isn't English-speaking. ![]() "In fact, it appears to be that a foreign government ratted him out, effectively, to the FBI," says Eric Tucker at The Associated Press. The fact that this country did "convey the unspecified signal suggests its cooperation with the United States throughout the investigation," The New York Times reports. Before Toebbe agreed to drop off loaded memory cards - in sealed Band-Aid packages, gum wrappers, and a peanut butter sandwich - he asked his purported handler to have the foreign country show him a signal from their Washington embassy over the Memorial Day weekend, court papers state. ![]()
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