WASHINGTON — Abraham Teklu Lemma held a Top Secret clearance and contract IT jobs at three federal agencies. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to spy for Ethiopia’s government.
The 54-year-old from Silver Spring worked at the State Department, the Justice Department and the National Reconnaissance Office. Prosecutors say he fed classified U.S. information to Ethiopian officials for more than two years.
His plea was to conspiracy to transmit national defense information to a foreign government. That violates Section 794 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said.
The deal calls for 120 to 262 months in prison. A judge still has to sign off on it.
What he passed along
It started in 2021, court papers show, and lasted until his arrest in August 2023. Working with senior Ethiopian officials, Lemma collected dozens of classified documents, notes, photos and other materials and sent them to Ethiopia’s government.
The most sensitive pieces carried a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information marking. Leaking Top Secret material can cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” of the United States, the papers note.
Much of what he passed on dealt with an armed conflict in Ethiopia. His co-conspirators were senior people in the political, military and intelligence branches of the Ethiopian government.
Handwritten notes and electronic files
He went to some lengths to hide what he was doing, prosecutors said. Some of the secrets left government buildings in his own handwriting. He’d copy classified information into notes and walk them out of secure facilities.
His job as an IT administrator gave him a second route. He pulled digital copies of classified information from government repositories, then took that material out of the secure sites where he worked.
‘Please send Dro[nes]’
Lemma didn’t only pass along information. At times, he pressed his Ethiopian contacts to go after the paramilitary groups fighting their government.
On Dec. 18, 2021, he told one of them, “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, with a short request: “Please send Dro[nes].”
Officials respond
John A. Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security, said Lemma sent the material hoping Ethiopian officials would use it to target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict.
“Lemma betrayed the United States to an extraordinary degree.”
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro cast the plea as a warning to others. “His guilty plea sends a clear message: those who compromise America’s most sensitive secrets will be investigated, prosecuted, and held accountable,” she said.
At the FBI, Darren B. Cox said Lemma abused his access to “some of our nation’s most highly classified information.” Cox is assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Washington Field Office, which ran the investigation.
Sentencing set for April
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Tejpal Chawla and Adam P. Barry are handling the case. Trial Attorney Kathryn DeMarco of the Justice Department’s National Security Division is also on it.
Senior Judge John D. Bates set sentencing for April 14, 2027.
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