A former U.S. government information-technology contractor has admitted removing some of the country’s most sensitive intelligence and transmitting it to senior Ethiopian officials during an armed conflict.
Abraham Teklu Lemma pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to transmit national defense information to a foreign government, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Prosecutors said he exploited positions at the State Department, Justice Department and National Reconnaissance Office to collect and remove material classified as high as Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.
The plea agreement calls for a prison term between 120 and 262 months—10 years to 21 years and 10 months—if accepted by the court. Sentencing is scheduled for April 14, 2027.
What Lemma admitted
According to court papers summarized by federal prosecutors, Lemma held a Top Secret security clearance and worked as an IT administrator with access to classified systems. From 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, he conspired with officials in Ethiopia’s political, military and intelligence branches.
Prosecutors said the material included dozens of documents, notes, photographs and other records related to an armed conflict in Ethiopia. The information reached the TS/SCI level, a classification reserved for exceptionally sensitive intelligence with tightly restricted access.
Lemma used more than one method to get the information out of secure facilities, the Justice Department said. He wrote classified details by hand and carried the notes out. As an IT administrator, he also removed electronic information from classified repositories and then took it outside government facilities.
Prosecutors say the intelligence was used
Federal officials said Ethiopian authorities used information supplied by Lemma in military operations. The government has not publicly identified those operations, the specific armed groups targeted or whether anyone was killed because of the intelligence breach.
The Justice Department said Lemma sometimes urged his Ethiopian contacts to act directly against paramilitary fighters. In one December 2021 exchange cited by prosecutors, he encouraged a contact to deploy drones after providing additional information.
Associated Press reporting said an FBI affidavit filed in 2023 alleged that Lemma transmitted Top Secret satellite imagery and classified reports through an encrypted messaging application. Ethiopia’s government had not issued a public response to the plea.
How the case developed
Lemma was arrested in August 2023 after a government security review. The original criminal complaint accused him of copying information from intelligence reports, removing classification markings and transmitting material to a foreign intelligence official.
The earlier charging documents described requests for information about military command centers and rebel positions. At the time, prosecutors did not publicly name the foreign country; subsequent court proceedings and the guilty-plea announcement identified Ethiopia.
The charged conduct overlapped with Ethiopia’s 2020–2022 war between federal forces and Tigrayan fighters, one of the world’s deadliest recent conflicts. Fighting in northern Ethiopia resumed in 2026 after the earlier peace agreement, but U.S. officials have not publicly connected individual disclosures to particular battles or casualties.
Why the access matters
The case highlights the reach that technology administrators can have inside classified networks. Their jobs may require broad systems access even when they are not the analysts who produced the intelligence.
Top Secret information is defined by the federal government as material whose unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security. SCI controls add another layer by limiting access to designated compartments and approved facilities.
Lemma’s plea resolves the central criminal charge without a trial, but it does not answer every public question. The court must still decide whether to accept the agreed sentencing range, and officials have not disclosed the full operational consequences of the intelligence he transmitted.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s National Security Division are handling it.
Featured image: an original editorial illustration created for Meeko News; it does not depict Lemma, an actual government facility or genuine classified material.
