CIA employee accused of leaking classified information about Israeli attack plans to face charges in Virginia

On By Littum

WASHINGTON (AP) – A CIA employee accused of leaking classified information Assessing Israel’s past plans to attack Iran was ordered Thursday by a federal judge to face felony charges in Virginia.

The FBI arrested Asif William Rahman this week in Cambodia, and he made his first court appearance Thursday in Guam. A judge ordered that he be transferred to Northern Virginia, where he was indicted last week on two counts of willful detention and transmission of national defense information.

Court documents do not identify the federal agency that hired him, but a person familiar with the case, who was not authorized to discuss it, publicly confirmed to The Associated Press that it was the CIA.

The indictment does not delve into the specifics of the charges, but says Rahman had a top-secret security clearance and access to sensitive classified information. It accuses him of having unauthorized possession of top secret documents relating to national defense information and then illegally sharing them.

It was not immediately clear who will represent Rahman in Virginia and who can speak on his behalf.

The charges stem from the documents attributed National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agencythat appeared last month on a channel on the Telegram messaging app. The documents noted that Israel was still moving military assets into place to launch a military strike in response Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on 1 Oct.

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Israel carried out a retaliatory attack on air defense systems and missile manufacturing facilities in Iran in late October.

The documents could be shared within the “Five Eyes”, which are the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The emergence of the documents sparked an FBI investigation into how the documents were obtained — including whether it was a deliberate leak by a member of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained through another method, such as a hack — and whether other intelligence information was compromised .

Officials were also working to determine who had access to the documents before they were released.