Pentagon linguist in Erbil charged with espionage, accused of naming informants

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Mariam Taha Thompson, a contract linguist at the US Special Operations Task Force in Erbil, was charged with espionage by a Washington DC court on Wednesday. 

Born in Minnesota, Thompson is accused of sharing the names and personal information of informants in Iraq, as well as other classified information, with a Lebanese national affiliated with a US-designated terrorist organization.

Thompson was arrested by FBI special agents on the US Special Operations base in Erbil on February 27, 2020. She had been working for the Department of Defence as a contract linguist with top secret security clearance since mid-December 2019.

The defendant waived her Miranda right to silence following her arrest and issued a series of statements, in which she admitted obtaining and passing along information she was aware was confidential. 

She told investigators she had a romantic-interest in the Lebanese national, who specifically requested the information from her.

Thompson faces three charges of violating espionage laws, which could see her jailed for life. If the information she divulged leads to the death of the exposed informants, she could face the death penalty.

According to an affidavit obtained by Rudaw English, Thompson began accessing information she “did not have a legitimate need to access” on December 30, 2019, shortly after her arrival in Erbil. This included the names and personal information of human intelligence sources.

Pursuant to a court-order, FBI special agents searched Thompson’s Erbil apartment and found a hand-written note in Arabic under the linguist’s mattress.

“The note states that the named human assets were collecting information. The note further instructs that the human assets’ phones should be monitored and a named individual (Target 1) should be warned,” the affidavit reads.

Thompson told the agents she transmitted the confidential information “by memorizing the classified information that she had viewed, writing it down and then using the video feature of a secure direct messaging application on her cellular phone to transmit her notes of the classified information to the co-conspirator.”

“The named individual to be warned (Target 1) is affiliated with a designated foreign terrorist organization and was, in fact, a target of the United States,” reads the affidavit. 

The document does not name the organization but specifies it is a different “foreign terrorist organization from Lebanese Hezbollah” and was designated a terrorist group by the Secretary of State “over a decade ago”.

In interrogations quoted in the affidavit, Thompson claimed she was not aware whether the individual she relayed information to was a member of Hezbollah or Amal, saying its “one of the two. They are the same.” 

She said the individual had a nephew working at the Lebanese Ministry of Interior.

When prompted to give her understand of Hezbollah, Thompson said they are like “the octopus. They can reach anyone”.