Henry Kyle Frese


Henry Kyle Frese was an employee at the Defense Intelligence Agency, between , during which time he was assigned to a facility in Virginia.

Indictment

On October 9, 2019, Frese was charged with two violations of the Espionage Act under 18 USC 793 by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia for willful transmission of National Defense Information.
The Justice Department alleges that Frese disclosed the top secret information to newspaper reporters, one of which Justice alleged was a reporter with whom Frese may have been involved in a "romantic relationship," and whom the government referred to as "Journalist 1;" Erik Wemple of The Washington Post identified the journalist as Amanda Macias, as did The Wall Street Journal, which also identified a second involved journalist as Courtney Kube, a senior reporter for NBC.
On February 20, 2020, Frese pleaded guilty to the willful transmission of Top Secret national defense information.
The Washington Post, News of Australia, and The Spectator all compared Frese's case to that of Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolfe, who allegedly passed on secrets to Ali Watkins during a romantic relantionship.

Sentencing

On June 18, 2020, Frese was sentenced to 30 months in prison; prosecutors had asked for nine years, but his defense argued, among others, that his girlfriend, “a reporter whose 'career was stalling',” had pressured and influenced him at a susceptible time: his “judgment was clouded by 'a misguided effort to salvage a relationship that was not worth saving'.”

Personal life

Frese had Canadian citizenship, which he gave up to work in U.S. Intelligence. As of 2019, Frese was in a romantic relationship with Amanda Macias, with whom he shared a home.