Iraq

Defense Contractor Gave Info to Romantic Interest With Hezbollah Ties, Feds Say

Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, from Rochester, Minnesota, is accused of passing information about eight U.S. intelligence sources on to her romantic interest

This Dec. 29, 2019, file photo taken from a helicopter shows Ain al-Asad air base in the western Anbar desert, Iraq.
AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, File

A Defense Department linguist working for U.S. forces in Iraq was charged with providing top-secret information to a person overseas with apparent connections to the Hezbollah terror group, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, from Rochester, Minnesota, was arrested on Feb. 27 at a U.S. military facility in Irbil, Iraq, where she was assigned to a special operations task force, NBC News reports. Court documents accused her of passing on information about eight people acting as intelligence sources for the U.S., including their true names, photos, background information and other personal data.

The FBI said she passed the information along to a man with whom she had a romantic interest, knowing that he was a foreign national. The man "has apparent connections to Hezbollah," prosecutors said.

Court documents said Thompson admitting relaying the information by memorizing key points in classified documents, writing it down and sending an image of her notes by cellphone.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

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