The U.S. Justice Department says contractor Ian A. Brinksman accessed five classified reports outside his assigned duties before matching information appeared in Substack articles, leading to a charge of transmitting national-defense information.
The FBI arrested Brinksman, 42, on Oct. 23 after searching his residence. The criminal complaint charges him under 18 U.S.C. § 793(d), which the affidavit says carries a maximum prison term of 10 years.
According to the FBI affidavit, Brinksman accessed the reports on March 11, May 12, May 26 and July 28, then accessed the fifth several times from Aug. 24 to Oct. 1. The corresponding articles appeared on those dates or within days. A government classification official said each article reflected information in its corresponding report. All five reports had markings that included Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), and the affidavit says they fell outside Brinksman’s work duties.
Investigators cited database, facility-entry and phone records. By the date of the Oct. 23 affidavit, they had counted more than 800 completed or attempted calls involving Brinksman and a person identified as “Individual 1.” From March 1 to Oct. 5, as many as six people accessed the Substack page from a federal facility; Brinksman alone in that group viewed all five cited articles and accessed all five reports. The affidavit presents access, communication and publication records but does not say investigators witnessed or recorded an exchange of the reports.
An earlier EconoTimes article reviewed the affidavit’s database, phone and facility records.
Brinksman began working for a U.S. government agency in Virginia in 2020 and joined a contractor serving it in 2022 as a systems integration developer, according to the Justice Department. The public filing does not name either employer. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Brinksman had provided services to the CIA. The affidavit describes Brinksman’s work as involving data transfers between classified and unclassified systems, and says he held a Top Secret clearance with SCI access.
The filing refers to the publisher as Individual 1 and does not identify the reports’ subjects. Ynet reported that Individual 1 is journalist Aída Chávez and that the articles covered Israel, Iran and Bahrain; those details are unverified in the public filing.
Ratcliffe said unauthorized disclosures can endanger intelligence sources, ongoing operations and agency officers. The Justice Department said the charge is an allegation and Brinksman is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Reuters reported that a federal public defender representing Brinksman declined to comment.
