The Maritime Executive A U.S. Navy engineer and his wife have been arrested on charges of attempting to sell some of America’s most valuable nuclear secrets to a foreign government.
Jonathan Toebbe, an employee of the Department of the Navy, served as a nuclear engineer and was assigned to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. He had access to so-called “Restricted Data,” a specific legal term for automatically-classified nuclear secrets.
On April 1, 2020, Toebbe allegedly sent a package to a foreign government containing a sample of restricted data about the reactor for the Virginia-class submarine, the U.S. Navy’s latest-generation attack sub program. The package contained an offer to sell additional information, along with detailed instructions for making contact via encrypted email.
