Ex-CIA official pleads guilty to leaking top-secret docs about Israel’s plans to strike Iran

An ex-CIA analyst pleaded guilty Friday to leaking top secret documents about Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran last year, forcing the attack to be delayed.

Asif W. Rahman, 34, admitted to violating the Espionage Act when he leaked two records he took from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Oct. 17, which indicated that Israel was planning an airstrike in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack on Oct. 1, according to court papers filed in Virginia federal court Friday.

The top secret documents then landed the next day on a Telegram channel called “Middle East Spectator” and eventually “appeared publicly on multiple social media platforms, complete with the classification ranking,” a statement of facts filed by prosecutors shows.

Rahman — who’d been with the CIA since 2016 and had a top-secret security clearance — was working in the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, when he snuck the documents out in his backpack, bringing them home, copying them and distributing them, before destroying evidence of his actions, prosecutors claim.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of knowing and willful unlawful retention and transmission of national defense information and he’ll face up to 20 years behind bars at his sentencing on May 15, according to the plea agreement.

Rahman is likely to get far less time though as sentencing guidelines recommend he receive between five and six-and-a-half years behind bars.

Rahman’s lawyer, Amy Jeffress, told Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles that her client had been in talks with prosecutors since December, according to a report by the Washington Post.

If he continues to work with the feds, prosecutors could ultimately recommend an even lighter sentence.

Before the illegal disclosure of Israel’s plans, Rahman also gave away sensitive information multiple other times.

In the spring of 2024, when he was working in Virginia as a CIA analyst, he disclosed a batch of five secret and top secret documents, making copies and giving them to people who weren’t allowed to see them, the statement of facts says.

And in the fall of 2024, he leaked another 10 classified documents — not including the two involving Israel’s planned attack.

Each time, Rahman “deleted his activity from electronic devices and returned to his workstation with the classified materials where he shredded them,” the court filing says.

Rahman destroyed over 1.5 gigabytes of data and also a smartphone and a router that he’d used to send out the secret information.

Prosecutors said that Rahman may have been motivated by ideological beliefs and that he was still a threat to national security because he could attempt to release additional information to sway the Israeli’s war with Hamas.

The Israel military documents Rahman divulged didn’t include photos but laid out intelligence gathered from satellite images of an Israeli base taken on Oct. 15 and 16.

Rahman’s breach forced Israeli officials to postpone their attack — which was eventually carried out on Oct. 26.

He’s currently behind bars.

“Mr. Rahman betrayed the trust of the American people by unlawfully sharing classified national defense information he swore an oath to protect,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement.

Jeffress declined to comment Friday afternoon.