ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A CIA analyst charged with leaking top secret details ahead of a planned Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year will remain jailed pending trial, a judge ordered Wednesday.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles overrules a magistrate who said last week that Asif Rahman, 34, of Vienna, Virginia, could be free on restrictions while he awaits trial on charges of disclosing national defense information.
The fight over Rahman's detention revealed additional details about the government's investigation of the leak and the analyst who allegedly disclosed the classified documents in October on the Telegram messaging app.
At Wednesday's detention hearing, prosecutor Troy Edwards said Rahman was motivated by ideology, though he did not discuss what that ideology might be.
In fact, he said the conclusion that Rahman's motive was ideological was essentially process of elimination, noting that Rahman comes from a wealthy family and has access to a multimillion-dollar family trust, and therefore wouldn't have a financial incentive.
Edwards also highlighted eight pages of notes found on Rahman when he was arrested last month in Cambodia, where he worked at the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh. Those notes included two separate ''to-do'' lists, one of which was largely blocks of apparently encrypted text along with an unencrypted sentence pertaining to U.S. missile capabilities. Edwards said investigators have not yet been able to decipher the encryption.
A separate, unencrypted to-do list included categories labeled ''contingencies'' and ''run,'' Edwards said.
Official court documents are vague about what was leaked, but details discussed in open court make clear that it references an October disclosure of documents from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency noting that Israel was moving military assets into place to conduct a military strike on Iran after Iran launched its own missile attack on Israel on Oct. 1.
