WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th March, 2020) The US government charged a Defense Department linguist with providing highly classified information to a foreign national with apparent ties to Hezbollah, the Justice Department announced in a press release.
"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 Hezbollah," the release said on Wednesday.
The spying began on December 30, 2019, the day Iranian-backed Shia militia members in Iraq stormed the US Embassy in Baghdad to protest a US airstrike a day earlier, the release said.
During a six-week that followed, Thompson accessed about 57 files concerning eight human intelligence sources, according to an affidavit attached to the release.
"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 US government," the affidavit said.
Thompson then transferred the information to one or more handwritten documents, which she sent to an unnamed co-conspirator using a mobile phone app, the affidavit added.
In interviews following her February 27 arrest, Thompson admitted having a "romantic interest" with the co-conspirator, who had a nephew in the Lebanese government. Thompson also said the co-conspirator was either connected with Hezbollah or Amal - Lebanon's two Shia groups. She added that there was no difference between the two, according to the affidavit.
