He swore an allegiance to the US, but he was working for someone else. An IT specialist who worked across US government departments and held Top Secret clearance has pleaded guilty to transmitting sensitive documents to Ethiopia. Abraham Teklu Lemma, 53, admitted to the espionage offenses and agreed to a prison term between 120 and 262 months, the Justice Department confirmed on Tuesday. A naturalized citizen of the US, Lemma, of Maryland, had worked for the US government in different capacities and across different teams, including for the National Reconnaissance Office, State Department (DoS), and Justice Department (DoJ), between 2019 and 2023. These roles included working evening hours as an IT help desk technician at the DoS as of 2021, and daytime work at the DoJ as a contract management analyst, according to court documents. Lemma had what’s known as "downdraft" authority, which is to say that he was permitted to move classified files between classified systems, and unclassified files from classified to unclassified systems. Crucially, he was only allowed to access classified files on non-DoS systems with written approval that it was part of his official duties, and worked in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) – a secure workplace built for handling classified files. The criminal complaint [PDF] initially stated that the alleged offending began in July 2022, although the DoJ more recently claimed that it began in 2021. It claims Lemma was caught trawling "several" non-DoS classified portals and accessed intelligence reports without the proper authorization to do so. On various occasions, Lemma, who had held Top Secret security clearance since 2020, copied information from at least 133 intelligence reports without need-to-know authorization, according to court documents. Prosecutors claimed that the man downloaded more than 100 documents, burned them to CD/DVDs, and deleted their classification markings. The material Lemma was copying was at the Secret and Top Secret levels, but burned onto discs with green labels, which are approved for employees and are supposed to signify the contents of the discs relating to unclassified material only. Lemma would allegedly take these discs at the end of his shift and exit the SCIF with them tucked into his jacket pocket. On other occasions, he was observed looking at classified material on his PC, then taking handwritten notes before folding the paper and again storing it in his pocket…