A female linguist working for the Pentagon in Iraq was charged with handing over classified information about on-the-ground human sources assisting the United States to a Hezbollah-tied foreign national with whom she was romantically linked, according to the Justice Department.
Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, was charged on Wednesday in a Washington federal court with “transmitting highly sensitive classified national defense information to a foreign national” to a man with “apparent connections” to the Lebanese-based Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organization tied to Iran. If convicted, she could face life in prison.
The 12-page FBI affidavit put together by Special Agent Danielle Ray said the information that Thompson passed along “included classified national defense information regarding active human assets — including their true names” and that by compromising the identities of these human assets, Thompson placed the lives of both the human assets and U.S. military members in “grave danger.”
The DOJ said the investigation into Thompson, who worked at a U.S. military facility in Iraq as a contract linguist with a top-secret government security clearance, revealed that from Dec. 30 to Feb. 10, she improperly accessed approximately 57 files concerning eight human intelligence sources, including their true names and photographs, as well as cables showing the intelligence these assets provided to the U.S.
“While in a war zone, the defendant allegedly gave sensitive national defense information, including the names of individuals helping the United States, to a Lebanese national located overseas,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said. “If true, this conduct is a disgrace, especially for someone serving as a contractor with the United States military. This betrayal of country and colleagues will be punished.”
The audit of Thompson’s computer logs showed a “notable shift” in her network activity just one day after the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and on the same day Iranian-backed protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy, revealing “repeated access to classified information she had no need to access.”
The violent storming of the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, in early January followed the Iraqi government’s condemnation of U.S. airstrikes targeting Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces guided by Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his adviser Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, who were subsequently both killed in a U.S. airstrike. The U.S. blamed Kata’ib Hezbollah for attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq last December, including the death of a U.S. contractor. Soleimani and Muhandis’s men forced their way onto embassy grounds in droves along with members of other Iranian-aligned groups.
A court-authorized FBI search of Thompson’s living quarters on Feb. 19 “led to the discovery of a handwritten note in Arabic concealed under Thompson’s mattress.” The note contained “classified information” from Pentagon computers, identifying assets by name and warning a “target who is affiliated with a designated foreign terrorist organization with ties to Hezbollah.” That note said the phones for the assets should be monitored.
The classified information was given to “a co-conspirator in whom she had a romantic interest,” and the DOJ said she knew he was “a foreign national whose relative worked for the Lebanese government” and that he was also linked to Hezbollah.
The investigation found Thompson also provided information to her co-conspirator identifying another human asset “and the information the asset had provided to the U.S.” as well as details about “the techniques the human assets were using to gather information on behalf of the U.S.”
Thompson was arrested on Feb. 27.
Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s in Lebanon but now operates on six continents on behalf of Iran, from which it receives the bulk of its funding, although money from Hezbollah’s operations makes its way back to Iran’s coffers.
Hezbollah has been tied to a spate of terrorist attacks against the U.S., including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. service members in Beirut. Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, guided many of Hezbollah’s operations.
“The conduct alleged in this complaint is a grave threat to national security, placed lives at risk, and represents a betrayal of our armed forces,” U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea said. “The charges we’ve filed today should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider disclosing classified national defense information to a terrorist organization.”
