A former CIA analyst pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Virginia to charges that he leaked classified information about Israeli plans to strike Iran.
Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, Virginia, was arrested last year in Cambodia and later taken to Guam. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each of the two charges: retention and transmission of classified information related to the national defense.
Rahman had worked for the intelligence agency since 2016 and had a top-secret security clearance.
Prosecutors said Rahman illegally downloaded and printed classified documents at work and then took the documents home, where he altered the items to cover up the source of the information before distributing it.
The secret information was eventually published on the Telegram social media platform.
A Justice Department statement said that beginning in the spring of 2024 and lasting until November, Rahman shared the “top-secret information” he learned at his job with “multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive it.”
“Government employees who are granted security clearances and given access to our nation’s classified information must promise to protect it,” Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said Friday in a statement.
“Rahman blatantly violated that pledge and took multiple steps to hide his actions. The FBI will use all our resources to investigate and hold accountable those who illegally transmit classified information and endanger the national security interests of our country,” Wells said.
The Justice Department said Rahman destroyed journal entries and written work products 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.” He also destroyed several other electronic devices, including an internet router that the Justice Department said Rahman “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.”
The Associated Press reported that Rahman was born in California but grew up in Cincinnati and graduated from Yale University after only three years.
Rahman is scheduled to be sentenced May 15.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
