By Brett Lake
A Westminster man who has been fighting the National Security Agency for the return of his personal computers may get some of the information on his computers returned, but the NSA doesn't want to give up the computer hard drives.
John Wiebe, a retired NSA analyst, had several personal items seized from his Westminster home by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during the execution of a search warrant for a criminal investigation in July 2007. The items seized included personal computers, hard drives, other electronic items and various documents believed to contain classified information, according to court records.
Wiebe was never charged with a crime and received an immunity letter in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI returned all of his property except two personal computers and a 10-page document. In November, Wiebe filed a motion in the U.S. District Court of Maryland to have the rest of his property returned.
The hard drives from Wiebe's computers contain information that is currently classified as "top secret" and "sensitive compartmented information," which limits the distribution of the information to the United States and its four second-party partners: Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, according to court documents filed Jan. 13 by an NSA official under the name "Steven E.T., deputy chief of staff for Signals Intelligence policy and corporate issues."
The NSA, an intelligence agency within the U.S. Department of Defense, does not publicly identify most of its employees.
On Tuesday, the NSA, U.S. Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland filed a response to Wiebe's motion. The motion would have the computers' non-classified material returned using a portable disk, but not the original hard drives because of the classified information contained on them.
Kathleen McClellan, national security and human rights counsel for the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization, said the motions on behalf of NSA claiming Wiebe's property holds information that is beyond top secret are hard to believe when the NSA has had the property in its possession since 2007 and Wiebe was sent the letter of immunity in 2010.
The Government Accountability Project, which offers legal support to whistleblowers, has advised Wiebe throughout these legal proceedings.
According to the Government Accountability Project, in 2002, Wiebe and a former colleague filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General accusing the NSA of massive fraud, waste and mismanagement in connection with the rejection of a data collection system.
The subsequent espionage case against the colleague, Thomas Drake, was dropped by prosecutors last year.
The motion filed Tuesday also included a request for a Magistrate Judge to supervise the process of returning the property and resolving any pretrial issues.
The NSA is responsible for signals intelligence, information assurance products and services, and computer network operations, according to its website.
The mission of the signals intelligence portion is the collection, processing and dissemination of intelligence information for the purposes of foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and the support of military operations.
