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CIA official charged with leaking classified documents about Israeli strike on Iran
Iran Supreme Leader: Don’t ‘downplay or exaggerate’ Israeli strikes
Leaders of Israel and Iran appeared to give conflicting accounts of Israel’s attack on Iran a day earlier– with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the airstrikes ‘hit hard’ against Iran’s defenses and missile production.
A CIA official has been indicted on charges he violated the Espionage Act by disclosing classified U.S. documents about Israel’s preparations for a retaliatory strike against Iran for a missile attack earlier this year, according to court records and a source familiar with the charges.
Asif William Rahman was indicted Nov. 7 in federal court in Virginia on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.
Rahman was arrested Tuesday in Cambodia and brought to Guam to appear in federal court, according to court records. A initial court appearance was scheduled Thursday in Guam.
The CIA had no comment on the case. A Justice Department spokesperson declined comment beyond what was included in court records.
Authorities will hunt for motivation of leaker: expert
The indictment says Rahman gained access to a classified document marked “top secret” and “secure compartmented information” on Oct. 17 in Phnom Penh in Cambodia and delivered the document to someone who wasn’t entitled to receive it.
The document dealing with Israel’s strike, which circulated on the messaging app Telegram, appeared to have been prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It described U.S. interpretations of Israeli Air Force and Navy planning using satellite imagery from Oct. 15 and 16. Federal authorities investigated the leak.
Tracy Walder, a former CIA covert operations officer and FBI special agent, called the case “very serious” because Rahman held such a high security clearance.
“His leaking of the docs has confirmed that Israel has nukes as well as exposed our own collection methods,” Walder said.
Javed Ali, who held a variety of senior U.S. intelligence positions across several agencies, said Rahman’s arrest will set off a hunt for the suspected leaker’s motives and possible accomplices in obtaining and posting the information.
“This is not a good-news story for the CIA,” Ali, who is now a professor at the University of Michigan, told USA TODAY. “Who is this person? How long had he been in the position? Was he an analyst? A case officer? What motivated him to leak the information that he had access to? Was he involved in Iran-related intelligence operations?”
Ali said the case also underscores the significant vulnerabilities confronting the U.S. government in terms of how it keeps its most highly classified – and politically sensitive − secrets from becoming public.
“The fact that it’s a CIA person here shows again that every day there are tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people in the intelligence community and the military that have access to the most sensitive intelligence information this government has,” Ali said.
What happened during the Israeli strike?
Israel’s military announced it had completed a series of retaliatory airstrikes against Iran in response to an Iranian missile attack, a move that threatened to push the Middle East to a more dangerous and multifront phase of conflict a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state.
Iran’s state TV reported several strong explosions were heard around the capital, Tehran. Semi-official Iranian media said explosions also were heard in the nearby city of Karaj.
Israel’s operation came after Iran fired almost 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 in what Tehran described as a retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah and other top Lebanon-based Hezbollah leaders. Most of the missiles were intercepted with help from the U.S. military. A Palestinian man was killed in the West Bank.
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