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Asif W. Rahman was arrested after FBI investigators traced the download of the two leaked documents to his workstation in the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The records from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - marked top secret - described aviation exercises and movements of munition carts on an Israeli airfield that were consistent with preparations for a strike on Iran, but contained no images, U.S. officials have said.
Rahman, 34, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Friday to an indictment charging him with two counts of transmission of national defense information, reversing course after initially denying the charges. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles set sentencing for May 15.
Rahman faces up to 20 years in prison for the violations of the Espionage Act, though he probably will receive less as a first-time offender. Lawyers for both sides agreed that federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of about five to 6.5 years, and the plea agreement Rahman signed allows prosecutors to request an even shorter sentence if he continues to cooperate with U.S. officials.
Defense attorney Amy Jeffress said in court that Rahman had been in talks with federal prosecutors since the week after Christmas to discuss his acceptance of responsibility. She declined to comment after the hearing.
The leaked documents were posted Oct. 17 in a Telegram channel, "Middle East Spectator," just as Iran was bracing for Israeli retaliation. Tehran had fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel about two weeks before the leaked documents appeared online, in response to the killings of leaders from Hamas and Hezbollah last year. The Biden administration was publicly lobbying Israel not to target Iranian nuclear sites or energy facilities at the time of the leaks, which U.S. officials described as unsettling but not a threat to diplomatic relations.
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia said in court that Rahman possibly harbored ideological motives and posed a threat to U.S. national security because he could release more classified information in an effort to influence the conflict between Israel and Gaza. He had been a CIA analyst since 2016, and previously had access to classified information on the Middle East, U.S. officials said. He deleted more than 1.5 gigabytes of data, including a trove of reports on the Middle East that he had retained after losing authorization to access them, to cover his tracks in the days after the Oct. 17 leaks, prosecutors said.
"He was entrusted to keep this country, and its allies, safe," prosecutors wrote in a court filing. "But, on October 17, 2024, he abused that trust and put entire countries at risk."
The records showing the airstrike preparations "went from closely-held classified systems to the entire world at the push of a button," and delayed Israel's military plans, they added.
Prosecutors disclosed for the first time Friday that Rahman also leaked other classified documents over several months last year and destroyed a smartphone and router he had used to transmit records. The contents and recipients of the earlier batches of leaked documents were not disclosed in court hearings or filings.
Rahman printed a batch of five documents - designated as secret or top secret - while he was still working as a CIA analyst in Virginia in spring 2024, according to plea documents. He took the documents home, reproduced them and sent them to people who were not authorized to have them, Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy A. Edwards Jr. said at Friday's hearing.
In plea documents filed Friday, Rahman admitted he had also leaked 10 documents classified as top secret in fall 2024 in addition to the two documents concerning Israel and Iran. On Oct. 17, Edwards said, Rahman accessed the two documents on Israel's military preparations and sent them to "multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them."
A Yale University graduate who was born in Los Angeles, Rahman would collect information on specific countries and regions to include in briefing binders for U.S. officials, according to court records.
Rahman's wife had been planning to move in with him in Cambodia this month, and he was planning to visit Thailand and then his family in the D.C. area when FBI agents arrested him in November, his attorneys said. He shook hands with prosecutors and nodded to his family in the courtroom gallery before being led away by U.S. marshals after the hearing.
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