WASHINGTON—Jessica Lynn Quintana, a former employee of a contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), has pleaded guilty to knowingly removing classified information from the national security research laboratory, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth L. Wainstein announced today.
According to the facts admitted in her plea, Quintana was employed by a contractor at the Los Alamos research facility to archive classified information. On July 27, 2006, while she was working on this project in a secure area at the LANL, Quintana printed off pages of classified documents and downloaded other classified information to a computer thumb drive, before putting them in a backpack and taking them home. Quintana stored the pages and thumb drive at her residence, which was not an authorized location for the storage of classified information.
On Oct.17, 2006, the Los Alamos Police Department executed a state search warrant on Quintana’s home and seized the thumb drive containing classified information. Three days later, the FBI seized the classified printouts during the execution of a federal search warrant on her residence.
Quintana entered her misdemeanor guilty plea this afternoon in federal court in Albuquerque, NM. She faces a maximum sentence of up to one year in jail, a $100,000 fine, and a year of supervised release. She could also be sentenced to probation for up to five years. As part of the plea agreement, Quintana has agreed to cooperate with the government. Quintana no longer has a security clearance.
The case was investigated by the Albuquerque Division of the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Clifford I. Rones of the Counterespionage Section at the Justice Department’s National Security Division and by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert D. Kimball of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico.
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