MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – The wife of a Navy nuclear engineer pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a conspiracy to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country, closing an espionage case that mixed espionage and politics with the trials and tribulations of a suburban family.
Four days after her husband, Jonathan Toebbe, pleaded guilty to the case under a government deal, Diana Toebbe, a high school teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, admitted her part in a plan to sell nuclear reactor secrets her husband had stolen. the Navy, and will face a prison term of no more than three years, under the terms of its agreement with the government. Her plea was submitted during a hearing at a federal courthouse in Martinsburg.
In April 2020, the pair wrote to an unnamed foreign government, who handed the letter to FBI investigators and then set up a series of dead drops to ensnare Ms. Toebbe and Mr. Toebbe; he faces 12 to 17-and-a-half years in prison under the terms of his plea.
In court on Friday, prosecutors outlined how Ms. Toebbe served as a lookout while her husband deposited information in an FBI-established deadpot. Ms Toebbe said she “knowingly and voluntarily participated in a conspiracy with my husband, Jonathan Toebbe,” to try to sell government secrets to a foreign nation.
The plea deals will spare the government a lawsuit that could have risked exposing the foreign country involved in the plot — which officials have worked hard to keep a secret. It would also have risked making public some of the material the couple planned to provide to the foreign government.
Mr. Toebbe worked in the Washington Navy Yard developing nuclear reactors for US submarines. While he had access to some of the country’s most protected secrets, the exact nature of the material he attempted to sell in exchange for some sort of cryptocurrency has not been revealed by the government.
Former students and colleagues at Annapolis’ elite Key School described Ms. Toebbe as increasingly frustrated with US politics and former President Donald J. Trump.
She also complained about her salary at the school. Her husband earned a good government salary as a highly skilled nuclear engineer, $153,737 per year. Ms. Toebbe had even stronger academic credentials, with a Ph.D. from Emory University, but she earned less than some of her male colleagues, a source of friction she would express before her classes, according to former students.
And, people informed about the study said they believed the couple’s motivation was financial.
During a court hearing over her detention, the government read encrypted text messages between the couple that, according to prosecutors, demonstrated Ms. Toebbe’s estrangement from the United States. The defense argued that Ms. Toebbe’s frustration with Mr. Trump was hardly a betrayal and was, in fact, something many Americans shared.
The Toebbes have two school-age children, who attended the school where their mother taught until their parents were arrested.
Some of the text messages revealed in court and discussions with people informed about the case portrayed Ms Toebbe as an equal partner in the conspiracy or as the person who put forward the plot.
But from the start of the court proceedings, Mr Toebbe set out to take on as much responsibility as possible – presumably an attempt to reduce his wife’s jail term. During government-recorded prison phone calls, Mr. Toebbe told relatives that his wife was innocent. And in his plea deal, Mr. Toebbe said it was he who wrote the letter abroad and contacted the undercover FBI officer.
While implicating her in the conspiracy, he only admitted she was serving as a lookout, which some outside observers say was the bare minimum given that the FBI had a video of the couple at the dead drops they set up.
According to the government, Mr. Toebbe was the guilty party, as Mr. Toebbe had the security clearance and stole the Navy’s equipment.