Former Air Force intel officer charged with spying for Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran despite warnings from the FBI has been charged with revealing classified information to the Tehran government, including the code name and secret mission of a Pentagon program, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The Justice Department also accused Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, of betraying former colleagues in the U.S. intelligence community by feeding details about their personal and professional lives to Iran. Four hackers linked to the Iranian government, charged in the same indictment, used that information to target the intelligence workers online, prosecutors said.

Witt had been on the FBI’s radar at least a year before she defected after she attended an Iranian conference and appeared in anti-American videos. She was warned about her activities, but reassured agents that she would not provide sensitive information about her work if she returned to Iran, prosecutors say. She was not arrested at the time.

“Once a holder of a top secret security clearance, Monica Witt actively sought opportunities to undermine the United States and support the government of Iran – a country which poses a serious threat to our national security,” said FBI executive assistant director Jay Tabb, the bureau’s top national security official.

Tabb said “she provided information that could cause serious damage to national security,” though he did not provide specifics.

Witt remains at large in Iran, as do the four hackers, who prosecutors say were acting on behalf of the government-linked Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That group, a branch of Iran’s armed forces, has been designated by the U.S. government as terrorism supporter.

The indictment was unsealed the same week as Iran celebrated the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution and as the country denounced a Middle East security conference co-hosted by the U.S. and Poland. Officials said the indictment’s timing was unconnected to the meeting.

Witt, a Texas native, served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in the Farsi language and was deployed overseas on classified counterintelligence missions, including to the Middle East. She then found work as a Defense Department contractor.

She defected to Iran in 2013 after being invited to two all-expense-paid conferences in the country that the Justice Department says promoted anti-Western propaganda and condemned American moral standards. She was a Defense Department contractor at the time.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned the New Horizon Organization, which sponsored the conferences Witt attended and hosts events that American officials say promote Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories and serve as a platform for Iranian intelligence recruitment.

Witt first traveled to a “Hollywoodism” conference in 2012, when she appeared in Iranian television videos in which she identified herself as a former U.S. service member with hostile views toward America. She was warned by FBI agents that she was a potential recruitment target.