The FBI arrested a CIA contractor on Friday morning after searching his home, and the Justice Department charged him with passing national defense information to a romantic partner who maintains an online publication on Substack, the department announced.
Ian A. Brinksman, 42, of Washington, is charged by criminal complaint with unlawfully transmitting national defense information. According to the complaint, he went to work in 2020 for a federal agency based in the Eastern District of Virginia and in 2022 took a job as a systems integration developer for a company under contract to that agency. Throughout the period covered by the case he held a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information.
The department's account of the complaint refers only to a U.S. government agency. CIA Director John Ratcliffe supplied the name. His agency referred the case to the FBI, the Washington Examiner reported, and Ratcliffe said agents arrested "a contractor who provided services to CIA for alleged unauthorized disclosures of classified information."
Prosecutors describe an ongoing personal relationship between Brinksman and a person the complaint calls Individual 1, who maintains a publication on Substack and, the government alleges, repeatedly posted classified information there. In a fundraising article reportedly published in September, Individual 1 claimed to have "published reporting based on classified" assessments from the agency, the department said, and her social media profile carried the line "I also accept leaks."
According to the sworn affidavit of the FBI agent on the case, Brinksman repeatedly accessed classified intelligence reports and then communicated with the journalist, Reuters reported. Investigators allege that on at least five occasions this year, Individual 1 published Substack articles containing information that mirrored those reports, some of which were classified at the top secret level. The affidavit cites phone records, database access logs, badge-swipe records and emails.
Newsweek's account of the affidavit adds that phone records showed more than 800 calls or attempted calls between the two this year, and that investigators pointed to a November 2025 email in which Brinksman allegedly told a friend he was helping a journalist he was dating launch an independent publication focused on foreign policy. The affidavit describes that publication as focused on "reporting on Congress, War, and political economy." It also recounts a March 2026 episode in which the two worked together on edits to an article about geopolitical issues in the Middle East, though investigators said they had not identified classified information in that article.
"As alleged, Brinksman reached far outside his own duties to obtain some of our Nation's most closely held secrets and handed them to a romantic partner he knew intended to publish them," said John A. Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security. "That is not carelessness. It is a betrayal of his oath and the American people who entrusted him to fulfill his duties honorably." If the conduct is proven at trial, Eisenberg said, it is "a grave violation of the Espionage Act," and his division will prosecute it that way.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department "will continue prosecuting individuals who leak classified information and put our national security at risk." FBI Director Kash Patel called the protection of the country's secrets "a top counterintelligence priority of this FBI." Ratcliffe said unauthorized releases of classified material pose "grave risks to our national security, intelligence sources, ongoing operations, and our officers," adding, "There is absolutely zero tolerance for leaking."
The FBI's Chicago Field Office is leading the investigation with substantial help from the Washington Field Office. Trial attorneys from the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section and an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia are prosecuting the case.
A complaint is an accusation, not a finding of guilt, and Brinksman is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the department noted. Its announcement describes charges against him alone, and Individual 1 is not named in the complaint. The court appointed the federal public defender's office to represent Brinksman, and a federal public defender representing him declined to comment, according to Reuters. The journalist did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, the news agency said.
Brinksman made his first court appearance on Friday before Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick in Alexandria, Va. Prosecutors asked that he be detained, the judge granted the request, and Brinksman was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, the docket shows. A preliminary and detention hearing is set for 10 a.m. Tuesday in Alexandria.