A former CIA analyst, who was arrested in November and charged with leaking highly classified records revealing Israeli plans to launch a retaliatory strike on Iran, pleaded guilty on Friday in a federal court in Virginia.
Asif Rahman, 34, admitted guilt to two charges of transmitting national defense information, as stated in court records.
Rahman could potentially be sentenced to 10 years in prison for the first count and up to three years for the second count. The court has scheduled his sentencing for May 15.
According to the plea agreement, Rahman confessed to accessing and printing two documents outlining Israel’s plans for a retaliatory strike on October 17. He then took these documents to his residence, where he uploaded images of them and distributed them to multiple individuals who were not authorized to receive them.
Authorities were able to track him down remarkably quickly, given that he was the only individual found to have printed out the documents. He later took various steps to try and conceal his involvement in the leak, as investigators reviewed the logs.
According to the charging documents, Rahman was apprehended in Cambodia and subsequently transported to Guam.
In 2016, Rahman began his employment with the CIA as a U.S. citizen.
After the disclosure, Rahman took immediate action by deleting “approximately 1.5 gigabytes” of data from his personal folder in the Top Secret system. The deleted data consisted of numerous highly classified materials that he had downloaded over the years, primarily focusing on the Middle East. This decisive action was taken by Rahman in response to the situation at hand, as confirmed by prosecutors.
