A former CIA analyst has pleaded guilty to leaking top-secret national security information, the Justice Department announced today (Friday).
Asif Rahman, a 34-year-old resident of Vienna, used his security clearance to obtain classified documents that he then copied and shared with people who weren’t authorized to see them, according to the DOJ.
The top-secret information included details of Israeli plans to attack Iranian defense systems that was posted on “multiple” social media platforms on Oct. 18, 2024, prosecutors said in court documents that redacted the country’s names.
The document leaks led Israel to delay its attack, which was in retaliation for an Oct. 1 missile attack that Iran launched against Israel in response to the killings of militant leaders earlier last year, according to Associated Press and Washington Post reports. Israel ultimately attacked multiple sites in Iran on Oct. 26.
“With today’s plea, Asif Rahman acknowledges he betrayed the trust of his country by sharing classified information in spite of the risk to the United States and our allies,” Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, said in a press release. “Government employees who are granted security clearances and given access to our nation’s classified information must promise to protect it. Rahman blatantly violated that pledge and took multiple steps to hide his actions.”
An employee of the CIA since 2016, Rahman accessed approximately 17 documents classified as secret or top secret in the spring and fall of 2024, including two related to Iran’s attack plans that he obtained on Oct. 17, 2024, prosecutors said in a statement of facts.
From the DOJ press release:
According to court documents, on Oct. 17, 2024, Rahman accessed and printed two Top Secret documents containing National Defense Information regarding a U.S. foreign ally and its planned actions against a foreign adversary. Rahman removed the documents, photographed them, and transmitted them to individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them. By Oct. 18, 2024, the documents appeared publicly on multiple social media platforms, complete with the classification markings.
After Oct. 17, 2024, Rahman deleted and edited journal entries and written work product on his personal electronic devices to conceal his personal opinions on U.S. policy and drafted entries to construct a false narrative regarding his activity. Rahman also destroyed multiple electronic devices, including a personal mobile device and an internet router he used to transmit classified information and photographs of classified documents, and discarded the destroyed devices in public trash receptacles in an effort to thwart potential investigations into him and his unlawful conduct.
Beginning in the spring of 2024 and continuing through November 2024, Rahman repeatedly accessed and printed classified National Defense Information, including documents classified up to the Top Secret level, to take them to his residence. There, Rahman reproduced the documents and, while doing so, altered them in an effort to conceal their source and his activity. Rahman then communicated Top Secret information that he learned in the course of his employment to multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive it.
Rahman deleted 1.5 gigabytes of data from his email and a personal folder on his computer at the CIA in an effort to cover his tracks, according to court documents.
He was indicted by a grand jury on Nov. 7, 2024 on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, and arrested on Nov. 14 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he was working at the U.S. embassy, the AP previously reported.
Jailed until an expected trial, Rahman entered a guilty plea before a U.S. District Court judge in Alexandria today after admitting that he “is in fact guilty of the charged offenses,” according to the plea agreement.
As part of the agreement, he also must avoid contact with foreign government agents and notify the federal government of any contacts with media “so that representatives of the intelligence community may be present to monitor the information disseminated.”
Scheduled to be sentenced on May 15, Rahman could face up to 20 years in prison, 10 for each count.
