A US Navy engineer was recently sentenced to over a decade in prison for attempting to provide classified information about a United States aircraft carrier to Egyptian authorities. But, months after the engineer had downloaded ship schematics, taken photos of other sensitive documents, and then tried to find a way to safely escape to his native Egypt, it was revealed that his collaborator had been an undercover FBI agent all along.
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Mostafa Ahmed Awwad, 36, from Virginia, was sentenced to 132 months in prison, according to an FBI press release."Awwad took advantage of his position of trust within the Navy to share the schematics of the USS Gerald R. Ford nuclear aircraft carrier with individuals whom he believed were representing a foreign government," said Assistant Attorney General Carlin in the release. "The National Security Division will continue to seek justice for those who abuse their access to sensitive defense information."
Awwad was hired by the Navy in 2013, and, as part of the process of receiving a security clearance, visited Egypt to renounce his Egyptian citizenship. During this visit, it was apparently suggested by an embassy employee the "possibility of [Awwad] moving nuclear technology to Egypt," according to court documents. Three months later, Awwad returned to the embassy to chase up the prospect, but was disappointed by the lack of security awareness exhibited by the person he met. He traveled back to the US without an espionage plan in place.This is where, unbeknown to Awwad, the FBI agent comes in. In September 2014, the undercover agent contacts Awwad by phone, and speaking in Arabic, sets up a meeting under the pretense that he is working for the Egyptian government.According to court documents, Awwad made it clear that "it is his (AWWAD's) goal to move technology to Egypt." When the agent asked how this would be done, Awwad said that he had installed a "bug" on his Navy computer. Awwad explained that this device—it isn't described in any further detail in the court filings—bypasses the security measures on the Navy network, meaning he could siphon off information without being detected.
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At this point, Awwad was already removing Computer Aided Design files of the aircraft carrier USS Ford, which runs 1,100 feet in length and carries an assortment of surface-to-air missile systems in addition to two A1B nuclear reactors.Apparently Awwad's "bug", whatever it might have been, wasn't really up to the job, as the court documents later point out that investigators were able to trace the schematics being downloaded from the Navy network onto Awwad's terminal, and then burned onto a CD.
In another meeting, Awwad told the agent to "create twenty four fake emails." These would be used for one coded communication, and then deleted, Awwad suggested. "He tells the [agent] not to send two emails from the same account because the FBI uses sophisticated software to search email communications," according to court documents.Awwad also purchased a pinhole camera, seemingly paid for with $1500 provided by the undercover agent, in order to surreptitiously snap other sensitive schematics. Awwad however, in his continuing fumble through espionage, described to the agent "how he had so far been unsuccessful in getting the spy camera to work effectively because the camera lacked its own light source and therefore only captured dark pictures."
Later, Awwad told the agent he wanted to travel back to Egypt, at the government's expense and meet with senior officials. In a final meeting, the agent provided Awwad with an "escape plan," which in reality was just a normal envelope with no actual plan inside, and the FBI arrested him shortly after.According to court documents, the sort of information Awwad thought he was sending to a foreign government could alert an attacker to critical weaknesses in the ship's structure, and could also be used to identify the location of the nuclear reactors aboard the USS Ford."The Ford reflects several design improvements over the Nimitz class of carrier," one of the court documents continues. "The Navy spent millions of hours in engineering development on this ship and spent approximately $3.3 billion in engineering costs alone."Awwad pleaded guilty back in June, and among kindhearted letters from his family included in court documents, one line written by a brother-in-law seems to address Awwad's crimes directly."He is a person who sees a fiction movie, and imagines himself its hero for some good time."