Former FBI analyst sentenced for keeping classified documents at Kansas City-area home

A former FBI analyst has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for keeping classified documents at her Kansas City-area home.

Kendra Kingsbury, 50, pleaded guilty in October to two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to national defense. She was sentenced Wednesday to three years and 10 months in prison.

As an intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Kansas City, Missouri, office, Kingsbury had a high-level security clearance that gave her access to national defense and classified information. She worked in that role from 2004 to Dec. 15, 2017.

During her plea hearing, she admitted that she took 386 classified documents and kept them in her home in North Kansas City, Missouri. She also admitted that she retained and destroyed other classified and/or national defense information, the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release. She kept the documents on hard drives, compact discs and other storage media.

The information she took included documents classified at the secret level, some of which included U.S. efforts related to counterterrorism, details on specific FBI investigations, and sensitive operations in national security investigations and the FBI’s technical capabilities, the release said.

She also kept documents from another government agency that described intelligence sources and methods related to efforts to collect intelligence on terrorist groups, as well information on activities of emerging terrorists, federal prosecutors said.

An investigation into how Kingsbury may have used the documents “revealed more questions and concerns than answers,” according to the release. The investigation found that a number of suspicious calls to and from numbers associated with counterterrorism investigations, the release said, but Kingsbury has declined to say why she contacted those individuals.

In a court document submitted before the sentencing, Kingsbury’s attorneys asked that she be sentenced to probation. Although the document does not indicate a motive for Kingsbury’s actions, her attorneys note that she self-reported having taken the documents, had no previous criminal record and successfully met all legal requirements while on pre-trial release.

Her attorneys say Kingsbury had several serious medical and family issues that began shortly after she started working for the FBI, and has experienced public embarrassment and employment difficulties since she was fired from the agency. She most recently lived in Garden City, Kansas, where she was a single mother and the caretaker for her elderly mom.