Oak Ridge employee admits espionage charges

Roy Oakley (court illustration)

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On February 6, Roy Lynn Oakley, of Harriman, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to espionage charges under the US Atomic Energy Act. From 2006 to 2007, Oakley worked for Bechtel Jacobs, a contractor at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) in Oak Ridge. He had apparently been granted a security clearance and thus had access to a host of classified materials and data relating to uranium enrichment. In 2006, US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OIC) officers in Oak Ridge were tipped that “Oakley may have been in possession of protected materials that belonged to the DOE and was offering to sell the materials to a foreign government”. Along with FBI agents, they initiated a counterintelligence sting operation. In January 2007, an undercover FBI agent contacted Oakley pretending to be a foreign government agent. Eventually, the undercover agent met Oakley, who handed him “certain parts of uranium enrichment fuel rods, tubes and other associated hardware items” in exchange for $200,000 in cash. Oakley was then promptly arrested by FBI counterintelligence agents. A sentencing hearing has been set at the US District Court in Knoxville for May 14, 2009.