WASHINGTON – A man who worked for the U.S. government has been charged with leaking classified information assessing Israel's earlier plans to attack Iran, according to court papers filed Wednesday.
The man, identified as Asif William Rahman, was arrested by the FBI this week in Cambodia and was due to make his first court appearance in Guam.
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He was indicted last week in U.S. court in Virginia on two counts of willful transmission of national defense information — felony charges that can carry significant prison sentences.
It was not immediately clear whether Rahman had a lawyer or which federal agency employed him, but officials say he had a top-secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmented information.
The charges stem from the documents, attributed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, appearing last month on a channel of the Telegram messaging app. The documents noted that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1.
Israel carried out a retaliatory attack on multiple sites in Iran in late October.
The documents were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” which are the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
The emergence of the documents triggered an FBI investigation that examined how the documents were obtained — including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack — and whether any other intelligence information was compromised. Officials also worked to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted.
The New York Times was first to report his arrest.