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In May this year, in a town 40 miles south of Washington D.C., a woman was looking through some items left on the curb by their neighbor for the trash collectors, on the off chance there was something valuable. Alongside an assortment of household goods and personal belongings, the dumpster diver found some other items of note: manila folders marked “confidential.”

The neighbor, according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes, was an outgoing inventory management specialist at the Quantico, Virginia, headquarters of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The discarded documents included over 240 pages of classified information.

It’s unclear just what secret NCIS information was in the files. NCIS investigates major crimes involving the Navy and Marines, from child exploitation to narcotics trafficking to espionage. Three of the documents were marked both secret and “NOFORN,” the latter indicating that the information should never be released to foreign nationals without permission of the originator. All documents marked secret should only be visible to people with the correct clearances.

The NCIS worker in this case has not been charged. Forbes is choosing not to publish their name. The Department of Justice said it couldn’t comment on whether or not there was an ongoing investigation.

The former NCIS employee told investigators they were in the process of moving, but had no explanation as to why classified files were the trash. The employee was one of many federal government staffers who’d taken up Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency offer to resign back in January and February, and keep receiving wages up to September.

As evidenced by this latest investigation, driving large numbers of people out of the federal workforce comes with the risk of exposing highly sensitive........

© Forbes