WASHINGTON: A CIA official has been charged in connection with a leak of classified US intelligence documents about Israel’s plans for a retaliatory strike on Iran, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Asif Rahman, who worked abroad for the Central Intelligence Agency, was arrested in Cambodia by the FBI and was to appear in a federal court in Guam on Thursday, the newspaper said.
The newspaper reported Rahman, who held a top secret security clearance, was indicted in Virginia last week with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national intelligence information.
Iran unleashed a wave of close to 200 ballistic missiles on Israel on October 1 in retaliation for the killings of senior figures in Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel retaliated with a wave of strikes on military targets in Iran in late October.
The classified documents, circulated on the Telegram app by an account called Middle East Spectator, described Israeli preparations for a possible strike but did not identify any actual targets.
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 October 1.
