The weird thing is, the Marine Nationale has had nuclear powered boats since 1971 and a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Charles DeGaulle, since 1994. Unlike France’s nuclear weapons, they were developed with no help from the US so they might be superior to our or inferior – there’s no way to tell.
Presumably Toebbe would know this.
“stunning naivete”
I have said before: I fear that Burn After Reading is probably the most realistic spy movie ever made.
I’m guessing we have played war games against France as OpFor from time to time. Probably enough to have a good idea of the capabilities of their boats. Though whether Toebbe would know the specifics of such exercises is an open question.
Seconded.
“…the couple seemed to be driven by a desire for money (not a fortune, simply a comfortable nest egg) and a bit of adventure, the prospects for which they seem to have gleaned from romanticized books and movies.”
They longed for the romance of life in prison without parole, like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen* are serving?
*Hanssen received 15 consecutive life terms without parole, which leads one to suspect that the odds of his meeting his handler(s) over a bottle of wine or even a couple of Frescas at a café any time soon are rather slim.
We probably traded them some DVDs, “The Complete Jerry Lewis”, for all of their secret atomic info.
Joke’s on them: they’re all NTSC format.
The prosecution admitted in court yesterday that they only have 1 of the 51 pieces of intel that they allege the defendants had. If they can’t produce the others, I wonder what that does to their case.
Yeah, as a former Nuclear machinist mate I have a pretty good idea what exactly that means, and it’s almost assuredly worthless to any foreign power. Mostly the kind of thing you learn in a nuclear engineering program in college, just with some more specific details about the pressures, temperatures, power ratings, and operating modes of the S9G reactor plant. None of that translates directly into knowing the capabilities and acoustic characteristics of the Virginia class submarine, which is what any foreign power is actually interested in.
If he was smart, maybe this was an attempt to prove his goodwill and willingness to supply them with information. If he was an idiot, he thought this itself was worth anything to anyone.
(As former RCA) I used to tell people that the reason our reactor designs were classified is because the Soviets would laugh at us if they knew we were still using magamps.
I am not a submariner but wouldn’t information like this be useful even if it was less advanced than the technology the other country already had? The other country wouldn’t just need the information about how American submarines are designed and produced because they wanted to imitate our submarines. The same information would be useful to a nation that might be fighting our Navy and would want to look for potential vulnerabilities.
Of course this scenario is more likely if the other country is Russia or China. I can’t imagine a scenario where we fight a war with France.
The thing is, I doubt there’s any “potential vulnerabilities” you’d be able to determine from these documents. This really is the most basic information, it’s essentially textbooks that new sailors who work in the engine room are expected to study as soon as they arrive. Maybe a very dedicated enemy could use them to build a replica engine room they could use to estimate the sort of noise a real engine room would give off when a submarine is trying to be quiet, but those manuals aren’t as detailed as the engineering drawings you’d need to build a proper replica. There’s already more effective ways of gaining intel on submarines, such as following an enemy submarine and listening to it try to be stealthy.
I agree with @Mr.E. We’re not talking about finding the unshielded exhaust port on the Death Star, here.
Don’t get me wrong. This information is classified and these bozos should rot in a hole for trying to sell it.
I served 30 years ago and the keel of my boat was laid nearly 30 years before that. Everything I know was subject to mandatory declassification ages ago. I still have never told anything of substance, because it’s none of my business to divulge that information.
The publicly acknowledged basic operating parameters for submarines were relaxed right after I got out. I still say “greater than 400 feet, greater than 20 knots”, because that’s all I’m certain I’m allowed to say, never mind anything you might see in Jane’s or flipping Wikipedia. It’s called the “silent service” for a reason, and it’s not because the boats don’t make a lot of noise.
I used to have a top secret clearance. I suppose SCI goes with that. There are some things I never talk about with my friends or family, or online. That said, the stuff I knew was really a bunch of numbers. Honestly, I do not think I remember anything that is really top secret any more.
Tell me about it. It’s baked in after a while. I was a Cryptologic Technician (Maintenance) who worked at three direction-finding stations when I was in. The two schools I attended are still there but all of the three duty stations are gone, either repurposed for a non-navy use or razed all together – no need with the collapse of the USSR.
I was talking a couple months ago about how a particular piece of equipment had a Mallory Sonalert for an alarm, the exact same model McDonalds was using for their french fry timers and how you could tell who the [classified] operators were when you were waiting in line for your burger and they would look around a moment when one sounded.
Ooh, I haven’t seen that one. I’ll put it on my list.
Be warned: it is not a thriller; it is a comedy of errors.
It’s call part of the “idiot trilogy” for a reason. 
I just finally watched it because of this thread. Very good film!
I think I read that a torpedo was running hot in the rack. Something about the batteries being defective.