A former South African Air Force brigadier general has been sentenced to six months in a federal prison in the United States (US) after admitting that she acted as an agent of a South African spy agency while working at a sensitive American national security facility.

Portia Anyamba, 59, was sentenced in Tennessee this week after pleading guilty to acting as an undeclared foreign agent and making false statements during an application for a US government security clearance.

She was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to pay a fine of $9 500 fine.

During 2023 and 2024, Anyamba worked as a programme management operational specialist in the National Security Program Office at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The laboratory was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project and remains a major US Department of Energy facility involved in energy research, innovation, and national security.

According to US court documents, Anyamba regularly communicated with an intelligence officer employed by South Africa’s State Security Agency.

That officer was most likely Karen Burger, who The Common Sense previously reported had drawn a number of Afrikaner leaders into a fake news operation.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) first monitored a meeting between Anyamba and the intelligence officer, and another person associated with the South African government, in Knoxville in Tennessee in February 2024.

The group initially met at a restaurant before travelling to a nearby hotel.

Later that year, the intelligence officer arranged another meeting in November 2024 and instructed Anyamba to bring a laptop.

FBI agents intercepted her shortly before the planned meeting and recovered the computer from her possession.

At the time, Anyamba was applying for a US security clearance that could have allowed her access to classified information.

She falsely declared that she had no continuing contact with foreign nationals and had not communicated with representatives of a foreign government during the previous seven years.

Court documents also show that she contacted people listed as references on her application and instructed them not to disclose her links to the South African embassy.

US prosecutors said Anyamba’s actions placed national security at risk and stressed the importance of protecting Oak Ridge and other sensitive government facilities from foreign influence.

The case was investigated jointly by the FBI and the US Department of Energy’s counterintelligence division.