A former CIA official has pleaded guilty to leaking top secret US intelligence documents on a planned Israeli attack on Iran.
Asif Rahman was arrested by the FBI in November weeks after classified documents appeared on the Telegram messaging app.
The 34-year-old worked for the Central Intelligence Agency since 2016 and held a top secret security clearance.
Rahman faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in a federal court in Virginia to two counts of wilful retention and transmission of national defence information.
Top secret documents printed out, court filing says
Iran unleashed a wave of close to 200 ballistic missiles on Israel on October 1 in retaliation for the killings of senior figures in the Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
Israel retaliated with a wave of strikes on military targets in Iran in late October.
According to a court filing, Rahman printed out two top secret documents "regarding a United States foreign ally and its planned kinetic actions against a foreign adversary" on October 17.
The filing said he photographed the documents and used a computer program to edit the images in "an attempt to conceal their source and delete his activity".
Rahman then allegedly transmitted the documents to "multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them" before shredding them at work.
The filing added that "Rahman also destroyed multiple electronic devices, including a personal mobile device and an internet router he used to transmit classified information" and discarded the devices in public trash bins.
Two documents that surfaced on Telegram in October noted that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran's blistering ballistic missile attack on October 1.
High school valedictorian, Yale student
He was born in California and moved with his family when he was a child to Cincinnati, where he was a high school valedictorian, according to court papers submitted by his lawyer.
He went to Yale University and graduated in three years.
Assistant Attorney-General Matthew Olsen said in a statement that "Mr Rahman betrayed the trust of the American people by unlawfully sharing classified national defence information he swore an oath to protect".
The documents were shareable within the "Five Eyes," which are the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
AFP/AP
