Investigators think the breach likely came from a government insider
(Oct. 23, 2024 / JNS) — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the leak of classified intelligence related to Israel’s preparations to respond to Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack, the bureau confirmed on Tuesday for the first time.
“The FBI is investigating the alleged leak of classified documents and working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and intelligence community. As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further comment,” the agency announced.
The FBI is leading the probe, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told CNN. In recent days, investigators have worked to authenticate the files and determine who could have had access to them, the officials said.
This is “one indication that, for now, the FBI and other investigators are working off the theory that the breach most likely came from a government insider and not from a cyber intrusion,” the CNN report noted.
At least one of the leaked files appears to have been scanned from an officially printed briefing book, and the pool of people who printed these pages would be relatively small, sources familiar with U.S. intelligence said.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, on Tuesday denied a Sky News report that Tehran-born Ariane Tabatabai, chief of staff of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, is being investigated for leaking the intelligence to Iranian sources.
“It’s important to let the investigation run its course. To my knowledge, this official is not a subject of interest, and the department remains fully committed to supporting the investigation,” the spokesperson told reporters at a press conference.
Tabatabai, who was brought up in the Islamic Republic as the daughter of one of the regime’s leading political thinkers, previously argued that Iran is “too powerful to contain” and has urged Washington to align with the Islamist regime and break its ties with Israel and its Arab Gulf allies.
Tabatabai came under fire in 2023 when members of Congress wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking for her to be fired after leaked files showed she had been in touch with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Former president and Republican candidate for the White House Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized the Biden administration for the leak, calling it “bad thing” during a meeting with Latino leaders.
“They leaked all the information about the way that Israel’s going to fight and how they are going to fight and where they are going to go. And somebody—who did that? Can you imagine somebody doing that? That’s the enemy. I guess that maybe is the enemy from within, as I talked about,” Trump said during the campaign event in Doral, Fla.
“We have an enemy from within,” the Republican continued. “They hate to talk about it. Can you imagine? So we just can’t stand for this incompetence anymore.”
U.S. President Joe Biden is “deeply concerned” over the intelligence leak, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. “That is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it does,” Kirby said, adding that the president “will be actively monitoring the progress of the investigative effort to figure out how this happened.”
Kirby said that it is not yet known how the documents were leaked and that the Department of Defense continues to investigate the incident.
“We don’t have any indication at this point that there’s an expectation that there’ll be additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain,” he added in response to a question from reporters.
Axios noted on Saturday that the intelligence leak may be an attempt to “disrupt” Jerusalem’s plans to retaliate against Tehran and revealed close spying by the U.S. on the Jewish state, including with satellites.
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