Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Gökhan Gün, a 50-year-old electrical engineer and dual Turkish-US citizen, has been charged with unauthorized possession of national security materials in violation of US law, with additional charges potentially forthcoming, as the investigation raises speculation that he may have shared, or intended to share, classified information with foreign agents, possibly Turkish handlers, during planned meetings in Mexico.
Born in Istanbul, Gün moved to the US in 2001 on a non-immigrant work visa, reportedly facilitated by his late sister, Günay Gün Purdham, who had originally come to the US as an au pair, working as a nanny for a Turkish diplomat.
Gün is described as a loner with little regard for family connections. He briefly married in 2014, but the union ended in divorce, with no children. According to DC-based investigative journalist Adem Yavuz Arslan, Gün did not respond to condolences after the death of his sister, who had worked for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and passed away two years ago.
He became a US citizen in 2021 and started working at the Pentagon’s Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) in September 2023, holding a top security clearance. JWAC plays a vital role in providing the Pentagon, particularly the US Strategic Command’s (USSTRATCOM) director of global operations, with innovative solutions for targeting critical infrastructure of an adversary and related systems.
Affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Madison Ramsden details how the investigation unfolded:
Affidavid_FBI_agent_Madison_Ramsden
Gün’s skill set included expertise in wireless communications, computer programming, scripting, virtualization and related technologies. He was involved in numerous JWAC projects, familiar with the center’s methods and capabilities and had connections with many personnel there.
The FBI detained Gün on August 9, 2024 as he was preparing to leave for Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for what he claimed was a fishing trip. In his backpack agents discovered a top-secret document and a printout listing his security clearances. The question of why a man supposedly heading on a fishing trip would carry such sensitive materials raised significant suspicion.
Possessing such documents at his home, an unsecured location, violated all his training as well as multiple non-disclosure agreements he had signed with the Pentagon prior to obtaining his security clearance.
Investigators believe that Gün carried the credential document to show a foreign malign actor that he had access to highly classified US government secrets. The second document, marked top secret, could potentially convince such an actor of the type of sensitive information he could produce in hard copy and illicitly remove from the country.
“Those two documents would be more than enough to pique the interest of our foreign adversaries and would establish that the defendant had the ability to deliver more information like that in the future,” the US attorneys pressing charges against him argued.
In the past he had traveled regularly, often to his homeland of Turkey as well as to Qatar and destinations in Europe and Canada, but never to Mexico.
According to the criminal complaint filed against him, Gün frequently remained at his workplace late into the evening and printed approximately 256 documents, totaling around 3,412 pages, between May and August of this year. Despite being prohibited from doing so, he took these documents home in a bag. It appears that he bundled and obscured classified documents among numerous unclassified materials he had printed.
The affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Madison Ramsden details how the investigation unfolded.
He was flagged in May when print logs revealed he had printed numerous documents from the top-secret network. Initially, these documents were unclassified, but he later began printing classified materials. By July he was printing many top-secret documents from the classified network, mostly after 4 p.m., outside regular working hours. CCTV footage captured him carrying rolled papers in a partially translucent shopping bag past security.
In early August employees of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) conducted a search of Gün’s workspace to locate the printed documents but found none in his desk drawers, shelves or common storage areas. Subsequently, the FBI took over the investigation and began surveilling him as he traveled between his two homes in Falls Church and Fairfax, Virginia.
Surveillance footage captured him holding two cell phones, conversing on one while looking at the other, despite records showing he was not issued a work phone.
On August 8, 2024 the FBI obtained a search and seizure warrant from a judge and executed it the following day at Gün’s two residences and his vehicle.
In a memorandum to the court dated August 14, 2024, Captain David Taft, director of JWAC, objected to the release of Gökhan Gün pending trial:
David_Taft_memorandum
During the FBI raid on his home, a document seized from Gün’s backpack was classified at the top-secret level, meaning its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to US national security. The US agency that produced the document later confirmed to the court that it contained national defense information related to the US government’s strategy on the research, development, application and execution of emerging technologies crucial to national security and defense.
Seal of the Pentagon’s Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), where Gökhan Gün had worked.
In a memorandum to the court dated August 14, 2024, Captain David Taft, director of JWAC and Gün’s supervisor, said, “If Mr. Gun were to pass that information to an adversary, it would certainly help that adversary develop countermeasures to mitigate identified vulnerabilities and defeat the attack, placing military plans and personnel at risk.” He cautioned that disclosing Gün’s personal knowledge of JWAC projects could result in catastrophic losses of sensitive technologies, adversely affect critical military operations and undermine years of research and development.
Gün initially denied possessing classified materials at his home during a voluntary interview with FBI investigators. However, he later revised his statement, suggesting that any such documents found at his home might have expired in classification. The FBI’s review of the documents, however, concluded that the classified materials were still valid and not expired.
Edwin S. Oshiba, administrative assistant to the secretary of the air force, verified the top-secret nature of the classified document seized from Gün’s bag:
Edwin_Oshiba_memorandum
At the time of his arrest, Gün was carrying both his US and Turkish passports, with the Turkish passport having expired in 2023. The presence of the expired Turkish passport during his planned trip to Mexico further fueled suspicions.
During a hearing to determine whether Gün should be detained pending trial, US prosecutors argued that due to the nature of his offenses and his knowledge of national secrets, he presented significant value to any foreign power that might seek to harbor him within or outside the US. “With his Turkish citizenship, the Defendant could drive into Washington, D.C. and seek asylum at the Turkish embassy or request a new passport to facilitate his travel out of the country,” prosecutors stated in a memorandum filed with the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on August 12, 2024.
On August 13, during a detention hearing, Judge Ivan D. Davis ordered Gün’s release despite objections from the US attorneys and agreed to appoint a third-party custodian to ensure Gün’s appearance at trial. The government promptly filed an appeal.
In their motion to challenge the pretrial release order, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Jessica D. Aber along with Assistant US Attorneys John T. Gibbs and Anthony J. Rodregous argued that the presence of the expired Turkish passport served no practical travel purpose.
“That he carried both passports in his bag suggests that he may have been attempting to show someone abroad that he was a citizen of Turkey as part of further establishing his bona fides. It may also have been part of an attempt to renew that passport overseas where the U.S. government would be less likely to find out about it,” they stated.
The proposal for a third-party custodian fell through at the outset as well. Gün initially named his girlfriend, Beatriz Yazgan, who lives in Reston, Virginia, as the custodian. However, Yazgan was unwilling to offer her home as collateral, refused to sign an unsecured bond and agreed to contribute only $1,000 toward the defendant’s bond, despite receiving approximately $180,000 annually in child support and alimony.
Gün later proposed his longtime friend, Derviş Alıcı, a Turk residing in Texas, as a potential third-party custodian. Alıcı, however, declined to sign an unsecured bond, was unable to post a cash bond and refused to offer his residence as collateral. Ultimately, Gün’s tenant, Christopher Graf, was named as the custodian in Virginia.
US attorney’s motion to challenge the release order for Gökhan Gün:
US_attormey_motion_to_challenge_Release_order
US attorneys argued that the refusal of two individuals close to Gün to serve as custodians demonstrated his weak ties to the community and increased the risk of flight if he were released. Ultimately, on August 29, US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff overturned the release order, keeping Gün in custody pending the start of the trial proceedings.
US attorneys have not yet disclosed whether Gün shared any of the classified documents with unauthorized individuals or foreign agencies, or with whom such disclosures may have occurred. During the preliminary detention hearings, they were hesitant to provide such information, citing the ongoing investigation and the potential risk to national security. Further details may be revealed during the trial if it proceeds.
Interestingly, the Turkish state news agency has maintained complete silence regarding Gün’s arrest, with no reports published about him. The Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., have not commented on the case. It also appears that the Turkish Consulate in DC did not request to visit him in jail despite his Turkish nationality.
This contrasts sharply with the actions of the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in previous cases. For instance, in 2016 the Turkish government arranged a defense team to help Turkish-Iranian national Reza Zarrab before he reached a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and even sent a diplomatic note to the State Department seeking his release.
Similarly, in the 2017 case involving Turkish nationals Eyüp Yıldırım of Manchester, New Jersey, and Sinan Narin of McLean, Virginia — who were involved in an attack on protesters in Washington, D.C., during an Erdogan visit — then-Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu personally visited both in a US prison.
Gün’s connections to the Turkish Embassy network, facilitated by his late sister, along with speculation entertained by US attorneys about the possibility of Gün seeking asylum at the Turkish Embassy or obtaining a new passport during his trip to Mexico, suggest that the Turkish government could be a potential factor in the case. However, no evidence has yet been disclosed by the FBI or US attorneys indicating whether Gün intended to pass top-secret information about the US to Turkish handlers or any other entities.
