CIA analyst, Yale grad, and former Yale Daily News copy staffer pleads guilty to posting Israeli plans for retaliatory strike on social media.
David Dumontet
Staff Writer, The Buckley Beacon
Former CIA analyst Asif Rahman (YC ‘13), who as a Yale undergraduate was Senior Copy staffer at the Yale Daily News, pleaded guilty Friday to leaking 17 classified documents to a Telegram channel, at least two of which were considered Top Secret by the U.S. government.
Rahman was tried in Virginia following an FBI investigation which traced the leaked documents on the Telegram channel “Middle East Spectator” to his workstation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The October 17 leak, first reported by Axios, exposed Israel’s plans for retaliatory strikes in Tehran, two weeks after Iran launched roughly 180 missiles into Israel, killing one Palestinian man from falling debris in the West Bank.
Rahman served on the YDN’s copy staff between October 2009 and May 2012, for most of his time as an undergraduate.
Rahman stole, photographed, and distributed two Top Secret documents, according to an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Yale graduate faces up to two decades in federal prison for two counts of willful transmission of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act, per court documents. Federal prosecutors in Virginia claim Rahman may have been motivated by political or ideological reasons, noting Rahman’s alleged deletion of journal entries and written work on personal devices of his that pertain to Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.
Rahman’s plea came just four days before former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett visited Yale University’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life.
“Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is not welcome at Yale,” reads an Instagram post by Yalies4Palestine, Yale’s primary student-led pro-Palestinian advocacy group, dated January 18. Another post dated January 21, the day of Bennett’s visit, reads, “Naftali Bennett, you are not welcomed here … war criminals are not welcomed on campus.” The same post noted a planned demonstration at 6 p.m. Tuesday in front of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall.
Rahman, 34, is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15.