With the recent identification of Edward Snowden as the man who leaked National Security Agency documents detailing anti-terrorism programs unknown to the public, Hawaii is home to yet another man accused of releasing top-secret government information.
As an employee for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and previously a technical assistant for the Central Intelligence Agency, Snowden had access to an abundance of NSA information and reportedly copied the last of the documents he planned to publish at his downtown Honolulu workplace before leaving several weeks ago for Hong Kong.
“I am not going to hide,” he told the Washington Post. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
The 29-year-old whistle-blower lived in a Waipahu rental home with his girlfriend, 28-year-old Lindsay Mills, for about a year before becoming the epicenter of the latest national security scandal. The NSA documents he leaked detail the existence of secret surveillance government programs, including an extensive catalog of phone user information collected from companies such as Verizon and a program called Prism that tracks Internet use to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.
Top national security officials, along with President Barack Obama, have expressed concern that Snowden’s actions have jeopardized the country’s ability to keep its citizens safe.
Others, however, have hailed Snowden as a hero who shed light on unjustifiably broad measures being taken by the government to monitor its residents in the name of national security.
The Department of Justice released a statement Sunday saying that “it is in the initial stages of an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by an individual with authorized access” and cannot comment further.
FBI Special Agent Tom Simon said Hawaii is known for its large intelligence community and that “investigations involving national security issues remain the Honolulu FBI’s top priority and the issue to which we devote the most resources."
“The majority of our Honolulu agents are focused on career paths within the world of national security investigations,” Simon said in an email sent to the Star-Advertiser. "Because of our unique location in the Asia-Pacific region, our agents are in tune with the national security threats that arise from Asia and are prepared to use that expertise to address those threats. … We also work closely with the other agencies in Hawaii’s national security community to ensure the safety of our nation’s secrets.”
In March, Kapolei resident Benjamin Bishop was charged with disclosing classified information to a person not authorized to receive it: his 27-year-old Chinese girlfriend.
Bishop, a 59-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve with three decades of service, was working as a government contractor at the U.S. Pacific Command when he allegedly told his girlfriend about nuclear weapons, early-warning radar systems and other U.S. defense programs. His court-appointed attorney, Birney Bervar, said his client was released Friday from federal custody. He is at Mahoney Hale halfway house in Kalihi, awaiting trial.
Bervar said he is reviewing the evidence in Bishop’s case and hasn’t yet received the classified evidence.
If convicted, Bishop could face up to 20 years in prison.
Meanwhile, 69-year-old Maui resident Noshir Gowadia is serving a 32-year prison sentence for selling secret defense information to China and other countries.
A 2005 indictment charged Gowadia, a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer, with “performing substantial defense related services for the People’s Republic of China by agreeing to design, and later designing, a low observable cruise missile exhaust system nozzle capable of rendering the missile less susceptible to detection and interception,” Simon said. Official charges included 17 counts of espionage, conspiracy, money laundering and tax offenses.
When Gowadia’s jury trial began in 2010, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Sorenson said Gowadia traveled to China multiple times in 2004 and 2005 and was paid nearly $84,000 for information and design work.
GOWADIA MOVED to the U.S. from India in the 1960s for postgraduate work and in 1968 became a defense contractor for Northrop Corp., now known as Northrop Grumman Corp., tasked with designing elements of the B-2.
He became a U.S. citizen in the 1970s and retired from Northrop in 1986, two years before the B-2 was released to the public.
The FBI began investigating him in 1999 when suspicions arose that he might be trafficking technology.
Simon said foreign countries often look to Hawaii to tap into U.S. secrets, and government employees should always be cautious.
“The Department of Defense has a massive footprint in Hawaii, so it would stand to reason that Hawaii would be a consistent target of foreign intelligence agencies,” he said. “Because Hawaii is a rich target for foreign intelligence officers, government employees with access to classified information need to take special care to ensure that America’s secrets remain secret.”
———
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
