The leak of high-classified U.S. intelligence documents to the Iranian regime last week has triggered a much-needed counter-intelligence investigation to identify the source -- either a mole who has betrayed their country, or a cyber-hack.
The documents, which bore Top Secret/NOFORN and compartmented intelligence headers, described U.S. satellite spying on Israeli airfields as the IDF conducted exercises believed to foreshadow a massive airstrike on Iran.
The NOFORN designation means that the document cannot be shared with foreign nationals other than members of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing arrangement the United States has crafted with the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
While the possibility exists that the materials were hacked from the highly-protected SIPRNET, the government's internal data base of highly-classified materials, there have been no public reports of any hacks of the SIPRNET by external actors.
Insiders, including former Army Private Bradley Manning and NSA contractor Edgar Snowden, have divulged reams of material from U.S. government classified holdings, but the government accused both of them of espionage, not hacking.
Last year, the Justice Department arrested a 21-year-old National Guard employee in Massachusetts in connection with the leak of more than fifty Pentagon documents, many of them classified, to a social media platform called Discord.
Those documents included U.S. assessments of the war in Ukraine, reports of Mossad disaffection with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and intelligence reports on Iran's negotiating strategy with the International Atomic Energy Agency, all of them embarrassing to the United States.
In the fall of 2022, Department of Justice investigators uncovered at least ten classified documents in Joe Biden's private office that included intelligence memos and briefing materials on Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom. Biden was never prosecuted for the security breach, even though most of the documents dated from his tenure as a U.S. senator, when he had no authority to take classified documents out of secure facilities where lawmakers can consult them.
Far more damaging for the United States, and of potential relevance in this latest leak of U.S. classified information to Iran, is the Iran Experts Initiative, an effort spearheaded by the Iranian Foreign Minister to lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime in the West.
Among the prominent members of the initiative was Ariane Tabatabai, who worked under former U.S. envoy for Iran Robert Malley, and today continues to have a Top Secret security clearance as chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations.
As I reveal in my new book, The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, Ms. Tabatabai was not only involved in the Iranian government operation "to expand Tehran's soft power in the United States," but would email Iranian foreign minister Javad-Zarif seeking policy guidance.
She was also close to Philip Gordon, the national security advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris who has been touted as a potential secretary of state under a Harris-Walz administration. The two co-authored several op-eds arguing for better ties between the United States and the Islamic regime in Iran.
President Biden is himself a long-time supporter of closer ties with Tehran. Just weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on America, Biden said "this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," according to Politico.
And as I report in my book, he made similar comments a year later at a fundraiser hosted by a pro-Tehran lobbying group in Washington, D.C., that better ties with Tehran were "in the naked self-interest of the United States of America."
A pro-Tehran culture permeates the Biden-Harris administration. It starts with the onboarding of senior Obama-Biden officials who were involved in negotiating the failed 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, including current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Iran negotiator Robert Malley, who has since been placed on an extended leave of absence by the Department of State for allegedly mishandling classified information that ultimately leaked to media outlets in Iran.
But it is far worse than that. As I reveal in The Iran House, a senior advisor to the Biden presidential campaign in August 2019 contacted Iranian foreign minister Javad-Zarif, requesting that the Iranian regime "do the same thing in Baghdad that you did with our embassy in Tehran" in 1979.
In plain English, the Biden advisor was asking the Iranian regime to take U.S. diplomats hostage, in order to create an "October Surprise" they believed would undermine President Trump's 2020 re-election effort.
Americans will be shocked when they learn the full extent of the Biden-Iran file. This latest leak of classified documents to Tehran was not the first breach of U.S. security by senior Democrat party officials. Nor will it be the last.
The most shocking part about it may be that the administration wanted to tip off the Iranians to the Israeli military preparations. They just didn't want that tip-off to become public.
Image: AT via Magic Studio
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