It’s Been a Bumpy Week for the Spooks

Insider threats, Chinese mega-hacking, meanwhile Trump proposes radical changes to the Intelligence Community

“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” -- V.I. Lenin

Just a few weeks ago, Washington got rocked by yet another leak scandal. Somebody with access to highly classified information stole current intelligence reports classified TOP SECRET-plus and they wound up on the Internet, specifically on a Telegram channel with a pro-Iran slant. The purloined reports detailed Israel’s plans to attack Iran, based on SIGINT from the National Security Agency and GEOINT from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

As Top Secret Umbra reported when the story broke, the possibility of an Iranian hack into highly classified Intelligence Community IT networks had to be ruled out, although that wasn’t the likely explanation for the leak. It was far more probable that a mole, or at least someone seeking to harm Israel, was the source of the leaked intelligence. Finding the leaker, forensically, represented the easy part of the counterintelligence problem here. As this newsletter explained, “In technical terms, it shouldn’t be difficult for DoD and IC investigators to determine who printed off the purloined documents, then leaked them to Telegram (they may not be the same person, of course: moles are known to collaborate). They may know already.”

It didn’t take counterintelligence investigators long to identify their suspect here. His name is Asif William Rahman, and he was taken into U.S. custody almost a week ago in Cambodia. The 34-year-old Rahman is known to be an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency overseas. As the Department of Justice press release delicately put it: “A U.S. government employee working overseas was charged with unlawfully transmitting two highly sensitive classified documents last month … Rahman held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance as part of his role working for the U.S. government.”