So we are recording on Friday, September 2nd at just about 11 a.m.

And what are we going to talk about this time?

Well, let's start out with the story.

In August of 2016, FBI agents searched the home of a cyber security contractor

working for the National Security Agency.

A contractor had a high level security clearance, and that meant he had access to some of the country's most sensitive secrets.

And the FBI agents searched the contractor's house, shed, and garage.

And they found a lot of highly sensitive material.

In fact, they found terabytes of data on computer hard drives and thousands of paper documents.

They were piled up in his ordinary house in suburban Maryland.

And in the end, the contractor, whose name was Hal Martin, negotiated a plea deal in 2018.

He agreed to plead guilty to just one criminal count.

And the basis for that plea was just one top secret document.

In fact, the document was so secret, it's only vaguely described in the public filing by the government as a 2014 NSA leadership briefing.

Now, federal prosecutors were worried that Martin might have sold or shared that information with foreign governments or just criminals.

And Martin's own lawyer said that his client was just a compulsive hoarder, couldn't help it.

But it really didn't matter.

Martin's motivations for holding on to the government's secrets were irrelevant.

It's a felony just to possess this information without authorization.

Now, here's how the prosecutor described the harm caused by Martin in court.

He said that the potential exposure of the country's most sensitive defense information

would be reasonably expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the country.

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