[VOA] An American military translator based in Iraq has been arrested and charged with handing highly classified information to a Lebanese national with apparent ties to the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, was arrested by FBI special agents on February 27 at an unidentified overseas military facility where she worked as a contract translator. She faces charges of delivering defense information to aid a foreign government and was scheduled to make her first appearance in federal court in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.
According to the Justice Department, the FBI investigation leading to Thompson's arrest uncovered that she had accessed dozens of secret military computer files on human intelligence sources over a six-week period beginning December 30, a day after U.S. strikes against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq.
The files included "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," the Justice Department said in a statement.
A court authorized the search of Thompson's living quarters on February 19 and found a handwritten note in Arabic with classified information that she intended to send to a Lebanese national in whom she had a romantic interest. The note found under a mattress included names of human assets and instructions that their phones should be monitored.
Court documents identify Thompson's co-conspirator as having apparent connections to the Hezbollah. The group was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997.