A U.S. intelligence official has been charged with espionage following the investigation into last month’s leak of top secret documents detailing Israel’s plans for a military attack on Iran.
Asif W. Rahman, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will appear in court in Guam on Thursday on two charges of knowingly retaining and transmitting national defense information, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
FBI agents arrested Rahman in Cambodia on Tuesday after he was indicted in federal court in Virginia last week, the paper said.
In October, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the unauthorized publication of documents purported to be from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Security Agency that were published on the messaging app Telegram. said.
The document comes in the wake of the escalating conflict in the Middle East, sparked by an October 1 missile barrage that was Tehran’s largest-ever attack against a regional enemy, and Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel in October 2023. , concerning Israeli military plans for retaliatory attacks against Iran.
The first document is titled “Israel: Air Force continues preparations for attack on Iran, conducts second large-scale troop recruitment exercise,” and the second document is “Israel: Defense Forces prepares for major munitions and secretly It is almost certain that UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) activities will continue.” For attacks on Iran. ”
NGA collects and analyzes information from U.S. reconnaissance satellites for the Department of Defense. Mr. Rahman’s exact relationship with the department is unclear, but court documents indicate that Mr. Rahman held top secret classified information that gave him access to classified information, which was classified as classified material. The Times reported that this is typical of many CIA employees who deal with
His arrest follows Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira being sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison in a case with striking similarities.
Teixeira pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of knowingly retaining and transmitting national defense intelligence, highly classified military documents related to the Ukraine war that he shared on the social media platform Discord.
Prosecutors said the leak was “one of the most serious and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in U.S. history.”
