US Navy engineer reportedly ruled out Russia and China as too adversary to the US to work with
A US Navy engineer who admitted to attempting to sell classified nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign power reportedly tried to sell the secrets to Brazil. 43-year-old Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana Toebbe both pleadedguilty last month after being caught in an FBI sting trying to sell “Restricted Data related to the design of nuclear-powered warships.” Until this week, however, the foreign power they tried to work with remained secret.
On Tuesday, the New York Times revealed that Toebbe “approached Brazil nearly two years ago with an offer of thousands of pages of classified documents about nuclear reactors.” After Toebbe made the offer to Brazil’s military intelligence agency, it forwarded the information to the FBI, which then organized a sting to catch the US Navy engineer red-handed.
An undercover FBI agent posed as a Brazilian representative and convinced Toebbe and his wife to leave the sensitive documents in hidden locations. The couple was then arrested in October.
Toebbe reportedly chose Brazil because it was not an adversary to the US like other foreign powers, such as Russia and China, but was also wealthy enough to pay for the secrets.
Brazil was not named as the foreign power when news initially broke because the country did not want their cooperation with the US on the matter to be public knowledge, according to the report.
Jonathan Toebbe faces up to seven and a half years in prison, while Diana Toebbe faces up to three.
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
