Dale Britt Bendler, Acting as Foreign Agent and Mishandling Classified Materials, Virginia 2026

State: Virginia
Category: Public Corruption
Source: <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/former-cia-official-pleads-guilty-acting-foreign-agent-and-mishandling-classified" style="color:#cc0000;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">DOJ Press Release ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Â Ã¢â‚¬â€

A former CIA official has pleaded guilty to acting as a foreign agent and mishandling classified materials in Virginia. Dale Britt Bendler, 68, of Miami, was a full-time contractor at the CIA with a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance.

According to court documents, Bendler was required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act but failed to do so. He also removed classified material, classified up to the SECRET//NOFORN level, from authorized locations without authority and with the intent to retain such material at an unauthorized location.

From 2017 to 2020, Bendler worked with a U.S. lobbying firm and engaged in unauthorized and hidden lobbying and public relations activities on behalf of foreign national clients. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his services.

Bendler’s activities included an attempt to use his position and access at the CIA to influence a foreign government’s embezzlement investigation of one of his clients and a separate attempt to influence the U.S. government’s decision on whether to grant a visa to another client who was alleged to be associated with terrorism financing.

The CIA terminated Bendler’s contract and access in September 2020. In addition to pleading guilty, Bendler consented to the forfeiture of $85,000.

Bendler is scheduled to be sentenced on July 16 and faces up to seven years in prison. The FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon D. Kromberg for the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorneys Adam P. Barry and Heather M. Schmidt of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

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