Navy Spy Gets 12 Years

This kid did one deployment in a submarine and decided to betray his country by stealing a laptop and selling its contents to a foreign government. He plea bargained to avoid a life sentence, though he could have faced a death sentence if prosecutors pushed for it.

From MSNBC here:

NORFOLK, Va. – A Navy petty officer was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison for stealing a military laptop and peddling its contents to a foreign government.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann admitted guilt to espionage, desertion, larceny and destruction of government property before a military judge at Norfolk Naval Station earlier this week.

Weinmann, 22, deserted from the submarine Albuquerque in July 2005 after becoming disillusioned with the Navy. He told the court on Monday that he sought to live in another country.

Customs agent Allen Brock testified in August that Weinmann was found in March carrying a piece of paper with the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of two individuals, as well as a notebook whose handwritten contents aroused suspicion.

Weinmann was found at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport with $4,000 cash, three CD-ROMs, an external computer storage device and memory cards for storing digital images.

The information contained on the CDs has been classified.

Weinmann purportedly sold the classified data while in Austria and again in Mexico City. He was flying from Mexico City to Vancouver BC to visit his sister. When his flight landed in Dallas for a stopover, he was dragged from the flight by agents and the Customs officers found the evidence on him.

Weinmann is a leftist from the West Coast that was angry at the Bush administration for his war policies, so he decided to betray his whole country by selling secrets. If he was not happy with the war, why the hell did he join the military? I suspect he joined with the intention of betraying the country.