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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Aftergood on "Document Collector Charged Under Espionage Statute"

Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News has a fascinating, must-read piece called "Document Collector Charged Under Espionage Statute" (available here, read it), describing the case of James F. Hitselberger, who is apparently charged with "unlawful retention of national defense information" for allegedly having classified documents in his living quarters while working for the Navy as a contract linguist in Bahrain. Hitsleberger is not accused of trying to provide the documents to any foreign government.  Instead, Aftergood describes Hitselberger as a "peripatetic collector of rare documents" who has a collection in his name at the Hoover Institution that has been open for research and that has also allegedly been found to contain classified material.

Case files for the Hitselberger case are helpfully posted here and AP has picked up on Aftergood's coverage here.