Ohio man sentenced after 'top secret' Air Force documents found in home

WHO TV 7 DAYTON — A Fairborn man who pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of illegally taking thousands of pages of classified documents from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was sentenced to prison Tuesday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

>>PREVIOUS REPORT: Over 1,000 top secret Air Force documents found at Fairborn home; FBI investigating

Izaak Kemp, 36, pleaded guilty in February to federal charges. He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for illegally taking about 2,500 pages of classified documents he got while working as a contractor at WPAFB, a DOJ spokesperson said in a media release.

Kemp worked as a contractor for the Air Force Research Laboratory between 2016 and 2019 and later worked for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center and had “Top Secret” security clearance.

“Despite having training on various occasions on how to safeguard classified material, Kemp took 112 classified documents and retained them at his home,” the DOJ spokesperson said.

During a May 2019 search warrant at Kemp’s Fairborn home, those documents containing thousands of pages of material classified on the “secret” level were found, the spokesperson said.

Kemp was initially under investigation by Fairborn police for allegedly growing marijuana at the home, which resulted in several plants being seized during the 2019 search as well.

The case escalated to the FBI when investigators discovered the documents, which they say were “related to Top Secret Special Access Programs” and were “clearly marked as classified.”

Such files are deemed so sensitive they require additional security beyond what’s normally provided for classified files and should only be stored in segregated, highly protected environments.

It has not been revealed in previous reports what was contained in the files.

Previously, Wright-Patt representatives said Kemp was never authorized to take the documents from NASIC and that he would have to bypass security checkpoints to get them out of the office.