Translator accused of revealing U.S. secrets amid tensions with Iran

WASHINGTON » A Minnesota woman who worked as a translator for the military in Iraq was charged on Wednesday with providing highly classified information to an Iranbacked militia group. Prosecutors said she intensified her espionage as tensions between the United States and Iran increased in recent months.

Prosecutors said the contractor, Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, revealed to a Lebanese man with ties to Hezbollah the names of foreign informants and details of the information they provided to the United States. The identities of such informants are among the government’s most closely held secrets, and law enforcement officials said Thompson endangered the lives of the sources as well as those of military personnel.

The officials suggested that the potential loss of classified information was grave and that the prosecution was one of the most serious recent counterintelligence cases they had seen. Several top national security prosecutors as well as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, appeared in court on Wednesday as Thompson made an initial appearance before a judge, demonstrating the importance of the case.

“If true, this conduct is a disgrace, especially for someone serving as a contractor with the United States military,” John C. Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement. “This betrayal of country and colleagues will be punished.”

The recruitment of a military contractor with access to such important secrets shows the strength of the intelligence operations of Iran and its proxy forces. American officials have long warned that Tehran’s intelligence work should not be underestimated.

In interviews with the FBI, Thompson admitted to investigators that she illegally shared classified information with the Lebanese official, according to court papers. Thompson appeared in court dressed in a red cardigan, her gray-streaked hair in a bun, but was not shackled. The judge ordered her held until a detention hearing on March 11.

She faces three charges of violating espionage laws. Under the statute, she could face up to life in prison and possibly the death penalty if the information she revealed led to the death of any of the informants.

Thompson was living in Erbil, Iraq, working on contract as a linguist. As tensions between the United States and Iran increased in the final days of December, investigators discovered, Thompson’s activity on classified systems did as well. For the next six weeks, she accessed secret government files that contained the true names and photographs of American intelligence sources and government cables that outlined the information they provided to their handlers.

Thompson’s purported espionage was discovered Dec. 30, days after American airstrikes on Hezbollah’s Iraqi arm and shortly before the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani of Iran in a Jan. 3 drone attack that was a serious escalation of President Trump’s growing confrontation with Iran.

The suspected leaks of classified information came at a critical time when Iranian proxy forces, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, were looking for ways to retaliate for the killing of Suleimani, the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades.

Investigators searched Thompson’s living quarters on Feb. 19 and discovered a handwritten note under her mattress listing the names of informants. The note, written in Arabic, also included a warning to a military target affiliated with Hezbollah whom prosecutors did not name and a request for the informants’ phones to be monitored.

Thompson told investigators that she provided classified information by memorizing it, writing it down, then showing the note to the Lebanese man when they spoke by video chat on her mobile phone.

The man took a screenshot of their video chat that showed her displaying a handwritten note with the name of two informants, court papers showed. Investigators also found pictures of the Lebanese Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on the man’s phone.

The disclosures by Thompson did not affect the timing of the drone strike on Suleimani, suggesting that he was not the target that she provided information about to the man.

According to government documents, Thompson had “a romantic interest” in the Lebanese man with whom she shared the classified secrets.