WASHINGTON—A CIA official has been charged with leaking top-secret classified documents that revealed information last month about Israel’s plans for a military strike against Iran, according to U.S. court documents and people familiar with the matter.
Asif William Rahman was arrested in Cambodia on Tuesday and transported to a federal court in Guam to be charged. He was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia on two counts of willful transmission of national defense information, charges that can result in years in prison.
Court documents filed Wednesday say Rahman possessed a top-secret security clearance and had access to sensitive compartmented information. The documents don’t state that he worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, but people familiar with the matter confirmed his employment at the spy agency.
Rahman worked overseas for the CIA in Cambodia and elsewhere, one of the people said. It isn’t publicly known what sort of work he did for the spy agency.
In October two leaked classified reports from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes imagery gathered by American reconnaissance satellites, appeared on Telegram and X. The files were circulated by a pro-Iran account, Middle East Spectator, which says it received them from an anonymous source.
The leak set off a scramble within U.S. spy agencies—which have suffered a number of significant unauthorized disclosures in recent years—to identify the source of the breach. Officials were worried about the possibility of more disclosures, though it appears the leak was limited to the original documents. The Federal Bureau of Investigation previously acknowledged investigating the leak.
The leaked reports assessed Israel’s planning for a possible Iran attack, including the types of aircraft and munitions its military could use. They also described Israeli air-force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, believed to be in preparation for aerial strikes inside Iran. One of the reports says the U.S. hadn’t seen any sign an attack would involve nuclear weapons, a capability Israel is known to possess but doesn’t publicly confirm it has.
The motives for Rahman’s alleged leaks weren’t immediately clear. His arrest took place the same day that Jack Teixeira, a former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, was sentenced to 15 years in prison over a leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents last year on the social-media platform Discord.
Teixeira’s leaks were more voluminous and wide-ranging than the pair of documents allegedly disclosed by Rahman, and authorities said their releases were done to impress anonymous friends on the internet. Teixeira pleaded guilty in March 2024.
On the contrary. I want my device to be as out of the way and unobtrusive as is possible.
looking forward to jonathan greenfatt of the adl trying to find the nuance in this one!