WASHINGTON (AP) — About three years ago, federal agents descended on a Maryland house and spent hours questioning the homeowner about what a prosecutor would later call the theft of secret government documents on a ”
breathtaking scale
.”

The suspect, Harold Martin, was a contractor for the National Security Agency.
His arrest
followed news of a devastating disclosure of government hacking tools by an internet group calling itself the
Shadow Brokers
. It seemed to some that the United States might have found another Edward Snowden, who also had been a contractor for the agency.

Later this month, the case against Martin is scheduled to be resolved in Baltimore’s federal court. But the identity of the Shadow Brokers, and whoever was responsible for a leak with extraordinary national security implications, will remain a public mystery.