MINNEAPOLIS _ A former Minneapolis FBI agent has been charged after allegedly leaking secret documents to a national news reporter, according to federal criminal charges filed in Minnesota this week.
The charges, filed by prosecutors for the Justice Department's National Security Division, are the first to come in Minnesota since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a broad crackdown on government leaks last year.
A two-page felony information, a charging document that typically signals an imminent guilty plea, outlines two counts filed against Terry J. Albury of unlawfully disclosing and retaining national defense information.
Albury is accused of sharing a document on assessing confidential human sources _ otherwise referred to as informants _ and a document "relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country" with a reporter for a national media organization.
The charges do not name the reporter or news organization but do specify that Albury allegedly possessed and shared the information between February 2016 and Jan. 31, 2017 _ the same date that the Intercept published an entry to its "FBI's Secret Rules" series on how the bureau assesses potential informants. The report drew upon a secret document obtained by the Intercept that shared the same publication date described in the charges against Albury.
Both an attorney for Albury and a spokesperson for the FBI in Minneapolis declined to comment on the charges. A message was meanwhile left seeking comment from the Justice Department.
Albury is listed as a special agent for the FBI with a phone number corresponding to its Minneapolis division in an online directories. The criminal charges filed Tuesday allege that Albury leaked the information while in Minnesota "and elsewhere."
Albury is also being charged in connection with failing to turn over a document "relating to the use of an online platform for recruitment by a specific terrorist group" last year.
Last August, Sessions announced that the Justice Department more than tripled the number of active leak investigations through the first half-year of the Trump administration.
Sessions also ordered his national security division and U.S. attorney's offices to prioritize leak cases and said the FBI created the a new counterintelligence unit to manage the heightening of probes into unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information. Sessions also said he was reviewing the department's policy on issuing subpoenas to reporters.
"We will not allow rogue anonymous sources with security clearances to sell out our country any longer," Sessions said.
The Justice Department in June 2017 charged federal contractor Reality Leigh Winner in Georgia shortly after she allegedly released a classified intelligence report to the Intercept that suggested Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier before the 2016 presidential election.
The Intercept article published in January that cited the Aug. 2011 secret FBI document pulled back the curtain on how agents cultivate FBI informants. According to the document published by the news website, agents create assessments of potential informants as "a means to induce him/her into becoming a recruited (informant) mainly through identifying that person's motivations and vulnerabilities."
The document further stated that the FBI "will also attempt to psychologically evaluate the target to determine the target's motivations, mental stability and loyalties and will seek information on the target's habits, hobbies, interests, vices, aspirations, emotional ties, and feelings concerning his country and his career and his employer."
