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Navy sailor sentenced to 18 years in prison over espionage charges

www.nbcnews.com Navy sailor sentenced to 18 years in prison over espionage charges

Bryce Pedicini, a former chief petty officer fire controlman, was accused of delivering classified and national defense information for a foreign government official.

Navy sailor sentenced to 18 years in prison over espionage charges

A U.S. sailor was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 18 years in a military prison Thursday after being found guilty of espionage while working for the Navy in Japan.

Bryce Pedicini, a former chief petty officer fire controlman, was convicted of attempted espionage, failure to obey a general order and attempted violation of a general order through a court-martial procedure. He was assigned to the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins in Japan when he was taken into pretrial confinement last year.

According to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Pedicini delivered classified and national defense information for a foreign government official from November 2022 to May 2023. He engaged with the foreign official "under the guise of writing research papers," it said. The Navy described that as a tactic U.S. adversaries increasingly use to obtain both classified and unclassified document.

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  • I don’t understand the charge of failure to obey a general order in this context. General orders are orders for guarding posts. For the army there are three and the navy there are 11. It’s stuff like don’t quit your post without proper relief, don’t talk outside of duty based things, salute officers….things like that. None of them are about espionage as far as I’m aware.

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