A US intelligence official has been charged with espionage offenses following an investigation into the leak last month of highly classified documents detailing Israel’s plans for military attacks on Iran.
Asif W Rahman, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will appear in court in Guam on Thursday charged with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The newspaper said FBI agents arrested Rahman in Cambodia on Tuesday following his indictment last week in federal court in Virginia.
In October, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the unauthorized release of the papers, attributed to the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Security Agency, which were published on the Telegram messaging app.
The documents related to Israel’s military planning for a retaliatory strike on Iran following the 1 October missile barrage that was Tehran’s largest-ever assault on its regional foe and an escalation of the Middle East conflict sparked by the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel in October 2023.
The first document was entitled “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second was “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”.
The NGA gathers and analyzes intelligence from US spy satellites for the defense department. Rahman’s exact connection to the agency is unclear, but court documents show he held a top secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, which is typical for many CIA employees who handle classified materials, the Times reported.
His arrest follows the sentencing to a 15-year prison term on Tuesday of the air national guard member Jack Teixeira in a case with striking parallels.
Teixeira pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, namely highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine, which he shared on the social media platform Discord.
Prosecutors said the leak was “one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history”.
