A former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst has now been sentenced to little more than three years in federal prison. He was sentenced for unlawfully retaining and transmitting top secret National Defense Information to people who were not entitled to receive it. Asif William Rahman, who is 34 years old and from Vienna, has been sentenced today to 37 months in prison. He was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had Top Secret security clearance to access very sensitive compartmented information. His employment was terminated from his job after he was arrested last November while he was located in the country of Cambodia.
Earlier this January of this year, Rahman had pleaded guilty to two counts of willful retention and also transmission of classified information.
As was previously reported, Rahman retained multiple Secret and Top Secret documents without authorization on October 17, 2024. He then took all of them to his place of residence in a backpack and willfully sent them to several other individuals. These individuals did not have the necessary security clearance to receive them, which is a serious federal crime in the United States. The defendant also took many different steps to conceal his own identity while he was unlawfully sharing this classified information.
Some of these classified documents were related to Israel’s potential plans to attack the country of Iran around that specific time. They eventually began circulating widely online after they were posted on the Telegram messaging platform by a specific online account. To cover up all of these illicit acts, Rahman engaged in what the U.S. Department of Justice has since described as a deletion campaign. He wiped roughly 1.5 gigabytes of data from his email and personal folder on his computer system to hide his actions.
He also deleted and edited certain personal journal entries in an attempt to conceal his personal opinions on various U.S. policy matters.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, provided a statement on this particular legal case. He said, “Asif Rahman violated his position of trust by illegally accessing, removing, and transmitting Top Secret documents.” These documents were vital to the national security of the United States and also to that of its various global allies. He stated the urgency with which Mr. Rahman was identified, arrested, charged, and then prosecuted is a testament to the investigators. This case should now serve as a stern warning to those who choose to place their own goals over their allegiance to our nation.
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