Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
American accused as spy for Iran
Charges say ex-Air Force officer defected, assisted hackers
WASHINGTON — A former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence agent was charged with espionage after she defected to Iran and helped it target her former colleagues, authorities said.
In a detailed indictment made public Wednesday, prosecutors disclosed that Monica Elfriede Witt gave the Iranians the code name and mission of a secret Pentagon program involving U.S. intelligence operations.
According to the indictment, she was working with members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The elite paramilitary group is known to carry out terrorist operations around the globe and has been sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Prosecutors described how Witt provided a copy of her biography and job history in August 2013 to a person with ties to Iran’s intelligence services. That same month, she moved to Iran and, while living there, officials provided her with housing and computer equipment. Prosecutors said that she searched Facebook accounts for Americans and created “target packages” for Iran against U.S. counterintelligence officials. Four hackers linked to the Iranian government, charged in the same indictment, used that information to target the intelligence workers online, prosecutors said.
The hackers, using imposter Facebook personas, were able at one point to join a private Facebook group composed primarily of retired government workers, the indictment says. The hackers sent the targets messages and emails that purported to be legitimate but instead contained malicious software that, if opened, would have given them access to the officials’ computers and networks.
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. She was not arrested.
“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 Iranian Revolutionary Guard, prosecutors said.
The Texas native served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in Farsi — the predominant language of Iran — 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 allexpense-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. American officials say the conferences, which promote Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories, serve as a platform for Iran to recruit and collect intelligence.
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. She was warned that May by FBI agents that she was a potential target for recruitment by Iranian intelligence.
“She chose not to heed our warning that travel to Iran could potentially make her susceptible to recruitment,” Tabb said. “She continued to travel.”
She attended the same conference the next year and was hired by an unnamed individual to assist in the filming of an anti-American propaganda commercial.
The Justice Department officials would not say whether Witt’s prosecution was connected to an American-born Iranian television news anchor who was recently released after being detained by the FBI as a material witness in an undisclosed U.S. case.
Marzieh Hashemi works for the Press TV network’s English-language service. She has not been charged with any crimes.