TWO PEOPLE CAN KEEP A SECRET, PROVIDED ONE OF THEM IS DEAD AND NEITHER OF THEM WERE ONLINE: Espionage suspect totally thought messages to Chinese intel were deleted.

On June 22, Kevin Patrick Mallory was brought before a US federal judge for his first hearing on charges that he sold highly classified documents to a Chinese intelligence agent. These documents, which are considered “National Defense Information,” included at least one Top Secret document and three classified as Secret and were found on a phone Mallory had been provided by his Chinese contacts. Mallory, a 60-year-old former Central Intelligence Agency employee living in Leesburg, Virginia, had thought the documents were in messages that had been deleted automatically from the device. Mallory faces life in prison if convicted.

The country’s in the very best of hands.