Nuclear sub secrets ‘sold in a peanut butter sandwich’
A US Navy engineer and his wife have been charged with spying by selling secrets about nuclear submarines – hidden inside a peanut butter sandwich.
Jonathan Toebbe allegedly traded the info for $70,000 in Bitcoin with someone he believed was an operative for a foreign power but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
The 42-year-old – arrested in West Virginia on Saturday along with wife Diana, 45 – placed memory cards at prearranged ‘dead drops’, the Justice Department claims.
Mr Toebbe, who worked in the office of the chief of naval operations, is accused of sending documents about Virginiaclass nuclear submarine reactors to a foreign power in April 2020.
He allegedly wrote: ‘I apologize for this poor translation into your language. Please forward to your military intelligence agency. This information will be of great value. This is not a hoax.’
The unidentified country – already believed to have nuclear submarines – passed the information to the FBI in December, according to court papers. Agents say they then set up exchanges with Mr Toebbe, and he put the secret data on memory cards concealed inside a sandwich, a chewing gum packet and a sticking plaster wrapper.
They say, on one data stick, a message read: ‘I hope your experts are very happy with the sample provided.’ Mr Toebbe also allegedly said the data ‘reflects decades of “lessons learned” that will help keep your sailors safe’.
His wife, a teacher, acted as a lookout on some dead-drops, the FBI said.
The pair are said to have tried to arrange asylum in case they were rumbled, saying: ‘We have passports and cash set aside for this purpose.’
Only six countries operate nuclearpowered submarines — China, France, India, Russia, the UK and the US.
The US and UK are to provide Australia with technology to deploy nuclearpowered subs, under the Aukus security partnership that recently sparked a diplomatic row with France.