Associated Press  |  November 29, 2006
NORFOLK, Va. - A submarine crewman accused of stealing a Navy laptop and peddling its classified contents to an undisclosed foreign government plans to plead guilty next week to some of the six charges against him, his civilian lawyer said Tuesday.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann, 22, of Salem, Ore., is scheduled for court-martial Monday at Norfolk Naval Station.

His attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, would not say which charges his client would plead to under the pretrial agreement, and he declined to release details about the maximum sentence.

Weinmann is charged with espionage, desertion, failing to properly safeguard and store classified information, copying classified information, communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it, and stealing and destroying a government computer. An espionage conviction could bring a sentenced of life in prison.

A spokesman for the Navy's Fleet Forces Command, Ted Brown, declined to comment.

Weinmann, a fire control technician, was stationed on the Connecticut-based submarine USS Albuquerque.

Although the Navy has not identified the foreign government allegedly involved, it has said Weinmann visited Bahrain in March 2005 and later deserted for more than eight months while traveling to Austria and Mexico.

During a preliminary hearing in July, the Navy disclosed that when Weinmann was arrested in March at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport he was carrying $4,000 in cash, three CD-ROMs, an external computer storage device and memory cards for storing digital images. The military has not said what it believes Weinmann might have sought in exchange for the information.


being that I was a submarine sailor, this hits me pretty hard. I am pretty pissed off about this.

here!here!