WASHINGTON — In 2020, a US naval engineer and his wife made the dismal decision to try to sell some of America's most confidential military secrets: the technological advances behind the nuclear reactors that power the US submarine fleet.
Then, the couple had to make another important decision: Which foreign government should they contact to try to sell the stolen secrets?
According to the text messages published by the court, it seems that the engineer believed that communicating with American adversaries such as Russia or China was going too far, from a moral point of view. Instead, Jonathan and Diana Toebbe thought of a country rich enough to buy the secrets, which was not hostile to the United States and, most importantly, that was increasingly eager to acquire the same technology they were selling: Brazil.
Until now, the identity of the nation contacted by the Toebbes had been protected by federal prosecutors and other government officials. But, according to a senior Brazilian official and others informed about the investigation, Toebbe approached Brazil almost two years ago with an offer of thousands of pages of classified documents about nuclear reactors that he had stolen from the U.S. Navy Yard over the course of several years.
The plan failed almost as soon as it began. After Toebbe sent a letter offering the secrets to Brazil's military intelligence agency in April 2020, Brazilian officials handed the letter to the FBI's legal representative in the country.
Then, starting in December 2020, an undercover FBI agent posed as a Brazilian official to gain Toebbe's trust and persuade him to leave the documents at a location chosen by the investigators. The engineer eventually agreed to provide documents and offered technical assistance to Brazil's nuclear submarine program, using classified information he had learned during the years he worked for the United States Navy.
The Toebbes, who lived in Annapolis, Maryland, were arrested in October and pleaded guilty to espionage charges last month. He faces up to 17 and a half years in prison, and she could spend up to three years in prison.
Brazil has continued to struggle with its submarine nuclear reactor program and contacted Russia to seek a partnership in the design of the nuclear reactor, said a Russian military official who, like all the people interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of maintaining their anonymity due to the nature of the classified material and its possible diplomatic repercussions.
Last month, just a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro even mentioned that technology during a trip to Moscow.
Bolsonaro has tried to maintain a positive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, even in the midst of his aggressions in Ukraine. Brazilian analysts believe Bolsonaro, a former army captain, hopes to keep the door open for a partnership to help develop nuclear reactor technology.
The Brazilian president's trip to Russia drew criticism from the Biden government. When asked about Brazil's efforts to acquire technology from Russian nuclear reactors, a senior government official said Tuesday that trying to acquire Russian military technology “is a bad bet for any country.”
In some respects, Brazil was a strange choice for the Toebbes. Although Brazil and the United States have limited military relations, Toebbe's attempt came during one of the periods of better relations between Brazil and the United States because Bolsonaro and former President Donald Trump strengthened the alliance of both countries.
Although the US government initially wanted to divulge the name of the country to which the Toebbes tried to sell the secrets, Brazilian officials insisted that their cooperation not be publicly disclosed, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
The White House, the Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment on this report. US officials have repeatedly said that the pair did not try to sell the secrets to the main adversaries of the United States, nor to its closest NATO allies, such as France.
In encrypted messages from 2019, which were recovered by the FBI, the Toebbes were discussing different plans to sell the secrets. A plan, as the engineer wrote, was so bad that they couldn't even consider it. Another idea, which was presumably about selling the information to a closer and friendlier country, was also questionable to the man, but his wife pushed him forward.
“Nor is it morally defensible,” the engineer wrote, according to a transcript of the judicial proceedings. “We convinced ourselves that it was okay but, really, it's not like that, right? ”.
Diana Toebbe replied: “I have no problem with that. I don't feel loyalty to abstractions.”
The engineer's public defender has said that government rules prevent him from answering questions. The wife's lawyer refused to discuss the case before her sentencing, which is currently scheduled for August. She has repeatedly said in court that the government presented a selection of messages that are out of context.
There were only a few countries that were not openly hostile to the United States and could use the technology and designs that Toebbe wanted to sell. Only a country capable of building a nuclear reactor and willing to invest billions of dollars in a fleet of nuclear submarines would be willing to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrencies it asked for.
Brazil began work on the development of nuclear submarines in 1978, originally motivated by its rivalry with Argentina. In 2008, during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration, Brazil reinvested in an effort to create a nuclear submarine, to better patrol and protect its exclusive economic zone in the Atlantic Ocean, a source of fossil fuels and other resources.
The country aims to launch its first nuclear-powered submarine in 2029, which is part of a $7.2 billion submarine program. Currently, the country is building four more traditional submarines with the help of France, but it has tried to develop a fifth submarine powered by a nuclear reactor on its own, a project with which it has had problems.
That is why Toebbe's experience in making nuclear reactors even quieter and harder to detect, as well as other design elements of Virginia-class submarines, would have been of great value to Brazil.
Although the Brazilian embassy declined to comment, a senior Brazilian official said the country had cooperated with US investigators over the association of both nations and friendly relations between Brazil's intelligence service and the CIA.
Had Brazil tried to buy US secrets — and those negotiations had been uncovered — relations between the two countries, including the exchange of intelligence information, could have been in jeopardy.
Instead, Brazilian officials worked with the FBI after Toebbe initially hesitated to leave classified information in a pre-established secret location.
“I worry that using the location your friend prepares will put me in a very vulnerable position,” Toebbe wrote, according to court records. “For now, I must consider the possibility that you are not the person I think you are.”
To trick Toebbe into believing he was talking to a Brazilian official, the undercover agent told him to look for a sign placed in the window of a Brazilian government building in Washington during the Memorial Day weekend last year. That operation could only have been carried out with the cooperation of Brazilian officials in Washington.
After seeing the signal, Toebbe agreed to leave a sample of the nuclear secrets he stole from the Navy hidden in a peanut butter sandwich in West Virginia, triggering a chain of events that culminated in the couple's arrest in October.
(C) The New York Times.-