A smitten US military linguist is facing life in prison after pleading guilty to leaking secrets to Lebanon's Hezbollah through a lover she had never met.
Mariam Taha Thompson, 63, was assigned to a US Special Operations Task Force in Iraq in December 2019 shortly before the assassination of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani.
But the linguist fell into a honeytrap, sharing classified information about human intelligence sources with a co-conspirator she had built a relationship with over a secure messaging application.
The relationship turned romantic, according to a US Department of Justice indictment, with Thompson planning to move back to Lebanon, where she was born, and marry the unnamed lover upon her retirement.
Thompson learned her paramour had a relative in Lebanon’s Interior Ministry and boasted of receiving a ring as a personal gift from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Prosecutors allege that the linguist's behaviour turned traitorous after the killing of Suleimani and militia commander Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis in a missile strike at Baghdad airport in January 2020.
After the strike, she was asked by her lover to provide information to "them" on the human intelligence assets who had led the US to Suleimani and Al Muhandis.
She understood "them" to be Lebanese Hezbollah.
The charge sheet alleges that she then used her top-secret security clearance to provide information on at least eight "clandestine human assets" and 10 US targets, as well as an array of US tactics and procedures.
It says that Thompson began compiling her own intelligence reports on requested assets in blank word documents, she would then take a picture of the documents and delete the word file without saving it – leaving no trace on government systems.
So content with the information were her handlers, that the lover offered to introduce her to an unnamed Hezbollah commander when she next visited Lebanon.
Thompson was arrested on February 27, 2020, at her living quarters at a US facility in Erbil, Iraq, barely two months after she had begun leaking information.
Two mobile phones were taken during the arrest, and handwritten notes containing classified information in Arabic were found under her mattress.
The charge sheet reads "Thompson intended and had reason to believe that this classified national defence information would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of Lebanese Hezbollah."
John Demers, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's National Security Division, described the linguist's behaviour as a betrayal that had put lives at risk.
"Thompson jeopardised the lives of members of the US military, as well as other individuals supporting the United States in a combat zone, when she passed classified information to a person she knew was connected to Lebanese Hezbollah, a foreign terrorist organisation which intended to use the information to hurt this country."
The US deems Hezbollah a terror group in its entirety.
"To describe this conduct is to condemn it. She will now be held to account for this disgraceful personal and professional betrayal of country and colleagues," he added.
