Saturday, August 27, 2016

"The Average Joe Accused of Trying to Sell Russia Secrets"

TDB:
When promotion after promotion passed satellite engineer Gregory Allen Justice by, he allegedly turned to the Russians to solve his family’s dire financial straits.

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The story of Justice is a cautionary tale of low employee morale combined with a 49-year-old man’s overactive imagination. As described in the affidavit, Justice’s preferred method for escaping the frustrations and anxieties of everyday life seemed to be watching Jason Bourne films and popular spy shows, like The Americans, a critically acclaimed series about deep-cover Soviet spies that Justice supposedly mentioned multiple times to his contact. Even the questions he allegedly asked about his handler’s exact role in the Russian government—quizzing him about the FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB—sound as if he had watched The Bourne Supremacy one too many times.

Justice had apparently been prepping for this act of corporate and national betrayal for several years. Starting back in 2013, he allegedly began spending thousands of dollars on online training courses, signing up for such topics as “Spy Escape and Evasion” and “Legally Concealed.” According to FBI computer records, Justice also researched the “sovereign citizen” movement and its highly esoteric arguments that U.S. citizens are, in fact, Constitutionally immune to any form of federal oversight, including income tax.

Justice clearly reveled in what many military and security professionals jokingly deride as “tacticool.”