US linguist charged for giving top-secret information to man with Hezbollah links

Maria Taha Thompson was arrested in Iraq on February 27 and appeared in court today

Hezbollah supporters in Marjayoun, Lebanon. Reuters

A US linguist working for the country’s Defence Department was charged with sharing classified information to an individual with links to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The sharing of the information is alleged to have occurred around the time Washington carried anti-Iran airstrikes in Iraq at the start of this year.

Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, of Rochester, Minnesota, was a contractor working as a linguist for US troops in Iraq before she was arrested last Thursday in Irbil and was charged in court on Wednesday.

According to the prosecutors, Ms Thompson allegedly passed classified information of about eight people to a man of “romantic interest” and who "has apparent connections to Hezbollah”. The US regards Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Court documents allege that the co-conspirator was a foreign national whose relative worked for the Lebanese government.

The information passed was “classified national defence information regarding active human assets, including their true names”. According to court documents, Ms Thompson admitted remembering key parts of the classified documents, writing them down and sending an image of her notes by mobile phone.

US lawyer Timothy J Shea for the District of Columbia, saw the case as warning to others.

“The charges we’ve filed today should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider disclosing classified national defence information to a terrorist organisation,” he said.

Ms Thompson held a top secret government security clearance, and the investigation leading to her arrest revealed that started on or around December 30, 2019, a day after US airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, and the same day protesters stormed the US embassy in Iraq to protest those strikes.

The document added that during a six-week period between December 30 and February 10, 2020, Ms Thompson accessed dozens of files concerning human intelligence sources, including true names, personal identification data, background information, and photographs of the human assets, as well as operational cables detailing information the assets provided to the United States government.

A court-authorised search of her living quarters on February 19 led to the discovery of a handwritten note that contained classified information from Department of Defence computer systems.

She was allegedly looking at nearly 60 files containing sensitive personal information.