In 2017, I started communicating with a person identified in the prosecutor’s document as an “unidentified co-conspirator” Lebanese who lived overseas. military human terrain team, or as a cultural adviser. He recommended me for a job as a leader of a U.S. He wrote that I ‘provided essential information to the theatre-level command which affected policy and operations throughout the country’. forces in Afghanistan, wrote a glowing 2010 letter of endorsement for me that I had put on my LinkedIn page on the Internet. In Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, then the commander of U.S. I had received letters of appreciation from top American military generals, as well as the Medal of Hero in the War against Terrorism.ĭuring more than three years in Iraq, I participated in hundreds of combat patrols to assist coalition leaders in their engagements with key Iraqi leaders. I was active in local business networking groups, and sold cookies at booths during celebrations in downtown Rochester. In the US, I owned for years a business in Rochester, Minnesota, called Mary’s Cleaning Service. I am at the mercy of Your Honor, and would politely request that you take into consideration other aspects of my life, my love of this country and my patriotism as an American citizen. I had been employed by Worldwide Language Services of Fayetteville, North Carolina, a company that described itself as ‘a leading international organization that has provided elite operational combat interpreters and translators to support U.S., allied and coalition forces for two decades.’ military, and was entrusted with a top-secret government security clearance. Starting in 2006, I worked as a contract Arabic linguist with the U.S. “I was born in Beirut, Lebanon, immigrated to the U.S. Next is a statement by Channing Philips, a US government attorney who was one of the prosecution team against Taha:
The following is Taha’s confession excerpted from FBI notes as well as the letter she sent to the judge.
#MARIAM THOMPSON LINGUIST TRIAL#
The affidavit, which was signed by FBI Special Agent Danielle Ray, alleged that internal logs showed a "notable shift" in Thompson's computer activity beginning on December 30 - the day after the US launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and the same day protesters stormed the US Embassy in Iraq to protest those strikes.Mariam Taha Thompson, a 62-year-old Lebanese-American who was a contract Arabic translator with the American forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, was sentenced last month to 23 years in jail for spying for Lebanese Hezbollah.Īt her trial and during the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), she confessed and asked for mercy, writing a long letter to the judge who presided over her trial. "By compromising the identities of these human assets, Thompson placed the lives of the human assets and US military personnel in grave danger," the press release said. The Justice Department on Wednesday charged Mariam Taha Thompson, a 61-year-old linguist at the Pentagon, with leaking the identifies of US spies and their methods to a foreign national who is suspected of having connections to the Hezbollah militant group and to whom she was attracted to.Īccording to a press release, an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against the defendant said the information Thompson collected and transmitted "included classified national defense information regarding active human assets, including their true names."