A senior CIA official with top security clearance has been charged with the recent leak of highly classified documents on Israeli war plans to the Iranians, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
A Guam-based CIA staffer named Asif W. Rahman was arrested after the Israeli plan for a counter-strike on Iran was passed on to Iranian-linked social media accounts. The leaked documents revealed detailed U.S. intelligence on Israeli military preparations in the run-up to a possible Israeli retaliation to a major Iranian aerial attack in early October.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was forced to delay its military response after the U.S. intellegence breach, The Times of London reported on October 20.
The NYT reported the arrest of a CIA official:
A C.I.A. official has been charged with disclosing classified documents that appeared to show Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran for a missile attack earlier this year, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.The official, Asif W. Rahman, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. He was arrested by the F.B.I. on Tuesday in Cambodia and brought to federal court in Guam to face charges. (…)U.S. officials have previously said that they did not know from where the documents had been taken, and that they were looking for the original source of the leak.Court documents said Mr. Rahman held a top secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, which is typical for many C.I.A. employees who handle classified materials.
The leaked documents, belonging to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for assessing information collected by U.S. spy satellites, contained highly detailed intelligence on Israeli Air Force drills and weapons placement ahead of a potential counter-strike on Iran.
The U.S. intelligence documents leaked to Iranians revealed the “measures that have been carried out in recent days at several Israeli Air Force bases, including the transfer of advanced munitions which, according to the report, were intended for an attack on Iran,” the news website Axios noted October 19.
The classified document claimed that “the Israeli Air Force conducted a large exercise this week involving intelligence planes and likely fighter jets trained for a possible attack against Iran,” the U.S. news outlet added.
The intelligence leak came to light as President Joe Biden was trying to press Israel into limiting the scope of its planned counter-strike. The IDF, in late October, carried out a retaliatory airstrike against Iranian military targets, derailing the regime’s drone and missile programs, as well as blowing away the Russian-made air defense cover — paving the way for any future Israeli strike.
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