Federal and local investigations were underway Thursday into allegations by a Marine gunnery sergeant that he gave stolen top-secret antiterrorism files to a Los Angeles Police Department officer and an L.A. County sheriff's detective.
Authorities said the probes by the FBI, LAPD internal affairs and Naval Criminal Investigative Service come after Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz testified during a court-martial at Camp Pendleton in July that he gave classified military intelligence to several people, including the two Los Angeles law enforcement officials.
Maziarz was on trial for allegedly taking the classified military files from Camp Pendleton and the U.S. Northern Command, which tracks domestic terrorism activity.
After testifying, he pleaded guilty to mishandling more than 100 classified documents and passing them to at least four individuals.
In his testimony, he said that L.A. County Sheriff's Det. Larry Richards, a department counterterrorism specialist and Marine reserve colonel, "recruited" him to collect classified documents at Camp Pendleton and pass them to him and others, according to military sources.
The testimony was first reported earlier this week in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Maziarz testified that he regularly handed documents to Richards and LAPD Officer David Litaker -- sometimes over lunch at the base, the sources said.
The months-long investigation has stunned many in the intelligence community, both because of the scope of the security breach and the questions about a possible motive.
With access to the most closely guarded U.S. government secrets, most military reservists working as intelligence analysts or counterterrorism agents would have been provided access to "Top Secret" or even "Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented" information.
Los Angeles law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said they believed that much of the intelligence in the case would have eventually made its way to local law enforcement.
One source said obtaining the data would put the recipients "ahead of the curve" in analyzing sensitive intelligence data for their law enforcement agencies.
To date, the sources said, there was no indication that any of the information had been passed to foreign powers or was used for financial gain.
Richards has served two tours in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star.
He is perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Sheriff's Department's groundbreaking Terrorism Early Warning Center.
