Washington — The Department of Justice charged former U.S. Air Force special agent and counterintelligence specialist Monica Witt with espionage, accusing her of defecting to Iran in 2013 and revealing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to the government in Tehran.
In a grand jury indictment unsealed Wednesday, prosecutors said Witt, 39, provided the Iranian government information about a classified Defense Department program and helped Tehran’s intelligence services target her former colleagues in the U.S. intelligence community. According to authorities, Witt collaborated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military unit charged with exerting Tehran’s influence around the world.
“[Witt] appears to have switched her allegiance to thinking that the United States, where she was born and raised and worked, was not where her allegiance was anymore,” assistant attorney general John Demers told CBS News Wednesday. Witt’s actions, the FBI said, put the life of the officer whose identity she revealed at risk.
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