A former information technology contractor whose jobs took him inside the National Reconnaissance Office and the State and Justice departments pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to pass classified national defense information to the government of Ethiopia, the Justice Department said. Abraham Teklu Lemma, 53, of Maryland, held a Top Secret clearance. Under his plea agreement he has agreed to a prison term of 120 to 262 months, or 10 years to nearly 22, if the court accepts it.
He pleaded guilty to one count, conspiracy to transmit national defense information to a foreign government.
What he admitted
According to the department's account of the court documents, Lemma conspired with senior Ethiopian government officials from 2021 until his arrest in August 2023 to collect and send them dozens of classified documents and photographs as well as notes and other material. Some were classified up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. Top Secret is the label for material whose unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause "exceptionally grave damage to the national security," in the release's words. Much of it concerned an armed conflict inside Ethiopia, and his contacts included senior officials in the country's political, military and intelligence branches.
He wrote classified information out by hand and carried the notes out of secure government buildings. As an IT administrator, he also pulled electronic copies from classified repositories and removed those.
The department quotes two of his messages from Dec. 18, 2021. To one Ethiopian contact he wrote, "We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia." Later that day he sent more information and wrote, "Please send Dro[nes]." Roman Rozhavsky, the assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in the same release that by Lemma's own admission, Ethiopian officials used what he provided in military operations during the conflict.
How the case began
Lemma was arrested on Aug. 24, 2023, and the criminal complaint was unsealed on Sept. 21 of that year. The complaint, which did not name the country, accused him of copying classified intelligence reports between Dec. 19, 2022, and Aug. 7, 2023, stripping off their classification markings and removing them from State Department facilities, then sending information to a foreign official over an encrypted app. The material included satellite imagery and other information about military activity in the region.
One exchange quoted in that 2023 release had the foreign official writing, "[i]t's time to continue ur support," and Lemma replying, "Roger that!"
The original charges included two espionage counts that carried a possible penalty of death or any term of years up to life, plus a count of willfully retaining national defense information.
What happens next
Sentencing is set for April 14, 2027, and the court decides then whether to accept the plea agreement and its 120-to-262-month range. The FBI's Washington Field Office investigated the case, and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and the department's National Security Division are handling it.
