WASHINGTON—A military linguist was charged with providing classified information, including the real names of people spying for the U.S., to a Lebanese man connected to the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.

In what would be a major security breach, officials said the linguist, Mariam Taha Thompson, 61 years old, who works under contract for the Defense Department, transmitted the highly classified data while serving at a Special Operations Task Force site in Erbil, Iraq.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit said beginning around Dec. 30, 2019—the same day protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iraq to protest U.S. airstrikes a day earlier—computer audit logs showed a shift in Ms. Thompson’s activity on classified Pentagon computer networks. In the ensuing 40 days, Ms. Thompson accessed 57 files, which “she did not have a legitimate need to access,” concerning names and other identifying information regarding eight U.S. human-intelligence sources, the affidavit said.

Ms. Thompson, of Rochester, Minn., was arrested in Iraq on Feb. 27 and faces espionage charges. She did not comment on the charges during a brief court hearing on Wednesday and hasn’t yet entered a plea.

In the affidavit, the government said that Ms. Thompson acknowledged to FBI agents after her arrest that she passed classified information to a contact in whom she had “a romantic interest.”


“While in a war zone, the defendant allegedly gave sensitive national defense information, including the names of individuals helping the United States, to a Lebanese national located overseas,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a statement.

Ms. Thompson appeared in federal court in Washington for the Wednesday hearing, dressed in a red cardigan and with her hair pulled back. She sat quietly as U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather read aloud the charges against her.

If convicted, Ms. Thompson faces the possibility of life in prison.

Ms. Thompson said little during the hearing, other than to say she was a diabetic and had high blood pressure. She is scheduled to be back in court on March 11. The prosecutor said the government then plans to ask for her continued detention, arguing Ms. Thompson poses a “grave” threat to “human assets in an active military zone.”


In the affidavit, an FBI special agent said the information that Ms. Thompson shared with her unnamed contact included the names of four U.S. human sources, along with a technique that one of the four was using to gather information.

The unnamed contact’s internet account, which was accessed by the FBI, also included information that one of the sources—identified in court documents as “Human Asset D”—had given to the U.S. government regarding a member of a foreign terrorist group being targeted by the U.S.

The alleged espionage took place amid rising tensions between the United States, and Iran and its Middle East proxies, including Hezbollah, which has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S.

On Dec. 29, 2019, the U.S. carried out airstrikes against an Iranian proxy group in response to a rocket attack that killed a U.S. contractor. On Jan. 3, a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the foreign wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.


Jeff Asher, a former CIA officer who teaches espionage history at Tulane University, said it was difficult to ascertain from court documents how damaging the alleged spying might be, but said it “potentially put the lives of people doing work for the U.S. government at risk.”

Mr. Asher said it was concerning Ms. Thompson had access to personal information on human intelligence sources, but that it was plausible she was working on those cases in her capacity as a linguist. The damage to national security and human sources may have been limited by how quickly the espionage was detected, he said.

—Dustin Volz contributed to this article.

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com