DOJ Charges Overseas CIA Official with Leaking Classified Israeli Information

Photo Credit: Pixabay

AI-generated image (illustrative only)

The US Department of Justice has charged Asif W. Rahman, a CIA official who works abroad with leaking highly classified documents that revealed Israeli military movements, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The suspect was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday in Cambodia and is expected to be brought to federal court in Guam on Thursday to face the charges.

Rahman was indicted in federal court last week in Virginia on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, both violations of the US Espionage Act. He held a top secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmentalized information, the NYT reported.

The documents were leaked on a Telegram channel last month, included analyses of information gathered from US spy satellite imagery of Israeli military movements.

They were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and appeared to show Israel’s plans for retaliation following an Iranian attack on the Jewish State.

The Espionage Act outlaws unauthorized retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.

Since Israel is a US ally, and not a “foreign adversary”, its military movements do not constitute any threat to the United States. So why was the Biden Administration spying on Israel, a nation with whom its leaders have repeatedly cited “an unbreakable bond,” in the first place?

It is obvious the Jewish State can no longer trust the White House mantra proclaiming America’s “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s security.

According to a report written by Stephen Clark for the ARSTechnica website, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has plans to build a network of at least 100 spy satellites, using the SpaceX Starlink satellite assembly line, to monitor US adversaries around the world. More than 80 of these satellites are already in the skies.

SpaceX and Starlink are owned by Elon Musk, who was just named by incoming President-elect Donald Trump to be a co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new entity intended to operate officially outside government as an advisory body. Musk also owns the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) and Tesla.

These SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, were launched on four Falcon 9 rockets and are intended to provide regularly updated imagery of foreign military installations and “other sites of interest to US intelligence agencies,” Clark reported.

Is it possible that imagery and information from one of these satellites was used to create the classified document on Israeli military movements that was subsequently leaked?

You bet. Anything is possible.