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

WASHINGTON (AP) — CIA employee accused of leak of 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 him transferred to northern Virginia, where he was charged last week with two counts of willful possession and transmission of national defense information.

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

The indictment does not go into detail about the allegations, but says Rahman had a top-secret security clearance and access to sensitive, compartmentalized information. She accuses him of having held top secret documents relating to information relating to national defense without authorization and of having then shared them illegally.

It is not yet clear who will represent Rahman in Virginia and will be able to speak on his behalf.

The charges stem from documents, attributed to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency And National Security Agencyappeared last month on a channel on the messaging app Telegram. The documents indicated that Israel was still moving military assets to carry out a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack October 1st.

Israel conducted 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”, namely the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The emergence of these documents sparked an FBI investigation that examined how the documents were obtained – including whether they were intentionally leaked by a member of the US intelligence community or whether they were obtained by another method, such as a hack – and whether other intelligence information had been compromised. .

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