
FBI special agents arrested Mariam Taha Thompson, an American contract interpreter, Feb. 27 in Arbil, Iraq. Thompson, who held a top-secret security clearance, has been charged with passing classified information to a man with links to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Following her arrest, the 61-year-old Thompson, who is from Rochester, Minnesota, reportedly waived her Miranda rights and admitted to interviewing agents that she had passed information to a man with whom she was romantically involved, and that the man had a nephew in the Lebanese Interior Ministry. Under further investigation, she admitted that she suspected the nephew was likely linked to Hezbollah. Thompson's Lebanese paramour was reportedly overseas when she passed him the classified information.