US charges CIA official with leaking document on Israeli attack preparations

The U.S. has charged a man who worked for the CIA overseas with leaking a classified document last month that assessed Israeli preparations for a counterattack on Iran.

The man, Asif William Rahman, was indicted in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia by the Department of Justice on Nov. 7, with two counts of the willful retention and transmission of national defense information.

The case was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Guam after Rahman was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia and brought to the American territory in the Pacific.

Rahman had access to top secret information in his role at the CIA. The indictment does not identify his role in the government or what documents he leaked, but the New York Times confirmed the details Wednesday.

The pair of leaked documents from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency circulated online in late October, just days before Israel struck sensitive military and missile production sites in Iran in retaliation for an Oct. 1 Iranian attack that fired some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel.

The documents showed the types of aircraft or weapons Israel might use in a possible attack on Iran and revealed the movement of munitions. They also tracked Israeli exercises in preparation for an attack.

The arrest comes just a day after Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira was sentenced to 15 years in prison for leaking classified documents in 2023 about the war in Ukraine and U.S. thinking about allies and other nations.