CIA employee pleads guilty over leak of classified Israeli plans to strike Iran

Washington: A CIA employee who was accused of leaking classified documents about Israel's plans to strike Iran pleaded guilty on Friday to criminal charges that he willfully retained and transmitted national defense information, the US Department of Justice said.

In pleading guilty, Asif William Rahman, who worked at the US intelligence agency since 2016, acknowledged that he illegally downloaded, printed and distributed classified information on multiple occasions, including several in 2024.

In the spring of 2024, he printed five documents that were labeled as secret and top secret from his work computer and took them home, court records in the case said. He then reproduced and altered them and shared them with people who were not legally entitled to receive them. To hide his conduct, Rahman deleted his activity from his electronic devices, brought the records back to work and had them shredded.

A second time, in the autumn of 2024, the court filings said he printed another 10 documents with a top secret classification, took them home and shared them with others.

Then on Oct. 17, 2024, he printed two more documents related to plans by a US ally to strike a foreign adversary, the court records said.

Those documents, which entailed plans by Israel to strike Iran, later appeared online after a pro-Iranian Telegram account called "Middle East Spectator" published them.

This case is filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Rahman, 34, is from Vienna, Virginia, and was arrested in Cambodia, according to court records. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15.