Contractor Pleads Guilty To Stealing Classified Data From Los Alamos Labs

A former employee with a contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory pleaded guilty this week to stealing classified information from the lab.

Jessica Lynn Quintana faces a maximum of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine. She has lost her security clearance and also could receive up to five years of probation.

Quintana was hired to archive classified information at the multi-disciplinary scientific laboratory in northern New Mexico. According to a release from the Department of Justice, she admitted in her plea that on July 27, 2006, she was working in a secure area at the lab and printed pages of classified documents and downloaded other classified information onto a thumb drive. She put the stolen data in a backpack and took them home.

Quintana told government agents that she stored the pages and thumb drive at her home, which was outside of her authorization limits. The government didn't release any details about why she took the information.

On Oct.17, officers of the Los Alamos Police Department executed a state search warrant on Quintana's home and seized the thumb drive containing classified information, according to the Justice Department release. Three days later, the FBI seized the classified printouts during the execution of a federal search warrant on her home.

She pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, N.M., on Tuesday afternoon.

Just last week, the government released new information about an FBI intelligence analyst who stole classified information from the White House and the FBI's own database for nearly four years. Leandro Aragoncillo -- a career Marine who had served under two vice presidents in the White House -- pleaded guilty and is awaiting his sentencing this summer in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J.