On Wednesday, a 61-year-old female contractor for the Pentagon was charged with providing classified U.S. intelligence to a Lebanese national allegedly connected with the terrorist group Hezbollah.
The Department of Justice announced:
Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, was charged today in the District of Columbia with transmitting highly sensitive classified national defense information to a foreign national with apparent connections to Hizballah, a foreign terrorist organization that has been so designated by the Secretary of State. According to the affidavit filed in support of a criminal complaint, the information Thompson gathered and transmitted included classified national defense information regarding active human assets, including their true names. By compromising the identities of these human assets, Thompson placed the lives of the human assets and U.S. military personnel in grave danger.
The FBI affidavit states:
Starting on or about December 30, 2019, a day after U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, and the same day protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iraq to protest those strikes, audit logs show a notable shift in Thompson’s networked activity on networked Department of Defense systems accredited to process and store information up to the Secret level. A review of Thompson’s activities on those government-owned systems showed that Thompson accessed information Thompson did not have a legitimate need to access. Specifically, from on or about December 30, 2019 to on or about February 10, 2020, Thompson accessed approximately 57 files concerning eight human intelligence resources. These files contained classified national defense information including true names, personal identification data, background information, and photographs of the human sources, as well as operations cables detailing information the human sources provided to the United States government.
As National Review noted, “On February 19 FBI agents searched Thompson’s Erbil residence and discovered documents under her mattress with the names of three U.S. intelligence assets, as well as a warning for the target of one of those assets.”
The affidavit noted:
Data obtained from the Co-conspirator’s internet account showed an image that read “Hizbollah” in large Arabic letters. The image was used as the “cover image” for a group the Co-conspirator had joined through the internet account. Review of a second of the Co-conspirator’s internet accounts … revealed photographs of Hizbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah stored in the Co-conspirator’s account.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers stated, “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. 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.”
Timothy R. Slater, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, added:
Today’s announcement is a testament to the U.S. government’s commitment to protecting the U.S. from the unauthorized disclosure of classified information that can put our country at serious risk of damage – damage to people and damage to our country’s capabilities. Human assets are the core of the U.S. government’s intelligence, and they have our assurance that we will go above and beyond to protect them. I want to thank the men and women at the FBI and our partners here and abroad who answered the call to assist on this fast-moving investigation. The FBI is charged with protecting our nation’s security and information for a safe and secure tomorrow for all Americans – we take this duty seriously and will not stand by while supposedly trusted individuals violate that trust in such an egregious way.