The Guy Hired to Catch Spies Was Busy Being One
There is something particularly spectacular about getting caught selling state secrets when your actual job is catching people who sell state secrets. Nathan Vilas Laatsch, a 29-year-old civilian IT specialist at the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty this week after an FBI sting caught him doing exactly that.
Laatsch had worked at the DIA since 2019 and held top-secret clearance. By spring 2025, he had been assigned to the agency's Insider Threat Division, the unit responsible for identifying employees who might be leaking classified information to foreign powers. Whether the irony registered is unclear.
The whole thing started in March 2025, when someone at a "friendly foreign government" received a cold email with the subject line: "Outreach from USA Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Officer." It was from Laatsch, who introduced himself, described his access to classified systems, and offered to start sharing. He attached a photo of his government ID for credibility, name and face redacted. Helpful touch.
What Laatsch did not know was that the FBI had intercepted the email. Rather than shut it down immediately, agents set up an undercover operation and started playing along. It took a while to get a response out of him. The FBI replied on March 23. Laatsch went quiet. They followed up on April 4. He finally replied on April 14. Not exactly a man in a hurry.
Once the conversation got going, things moved quickly. On April 28, Laatsch walked into his office, logged into his classified systems, and spent most of the day handwriting notes from his screen into a physical notepad. He hid the notebook when colleagues walked past. At the end of the shift, he folded the pages into squares, crouched under his desk, and stuffed them into his socks.
He repeated this routine on April 29. And April 30, though that time he used the bottom of his lunchbox as the exit vehicle.
On May 1, following instructions from who he believed was a foreign intelligence officer, Laatsch dropped a thumb drive at a dead-drop location in an Arlington, Virginia park. The FBI collected it instead. The drive contained nine documents, eight classified at top-secret level with sensitive compartmented information. He had selected them himself based on what he assumed the foreign government would find interesting. The drive also included a personal note from Laatsch, explaining that this batch was intended to demonstrate the kind of material he could access.
In subsequent messages, Laatsch provided additional value by describing how internal investigations at the DIA actually work, the common errors made by people under investigation, and why he personally would be able to avoid them. Confident.
He also mentioned he was not doing this for money. What he wanted was citizenship in the target country. He said he had become disillusioned with the current administration. He was "not opposed to other compensation" but did not need it.
The FBI arranged a second drop for May 29. This time, instead of a physical device, Laatsch was told to sit at a specific picnic table in the same park and transfer files electronically from his personal laptop. He showed up, connected, transferred the files and was arrested before he stood up.
He waived his right to a lawyer and confessed on the spot.
FBI assistant director Roman Rozhavsky summarised it with the kind of line that writes itself: Laatsch had betrayed his oath by doing the precise thing he was employed to prevent.
The case is a neat reminder that insider threat programmes are only as reliable as the people running them.