Washington, United States. The FBI said it is offering a 200,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of Monica Witt, a former active duty US Air Force intelligence specialist and former special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who is charged with espionage.
Witt, 47, is also known to use the aliases Fatemah Zarah and Narges Witt. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., indicted her in 2018. Authorities allege she defected to Iran and provided classified information to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the IRGC.
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The FBI outlined what it describes as a timeline of Witt’s path from US service member to a suspected agent working for Iran, and said it is seeking new tips aimed at capturing her and bringing her to justice.
Military service in the United States
According to the account provided, Witt was born in El Paso, Texas, and enlisted in the Air Force in 1997 shortly after turning 18. The New York Times reported she was assigned to the crew of an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft.
Her 2018 indictment says she was assigned to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, from 1998 to 1999, where she learned Persian, also known as Farsi. From May 1999 through November 2003, she was deployed to multiple overseas locations to carry out classified signals intelligence collection missions.
In 2002, she was reportedly deployed to Saudi Arabia. The indictment says she later served as a special agent, criminal investigator, and counterintelligence officer with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, assignments that took her to other parts of the Middle East including Iraq in 2005 and Qatar in 2006.
Prosecutors say Witt was part of a Special Access Program that gave her access to classified information, including details of ongoing counterintelligence operations, true names of sources, and identities of US agents involved in recruiting those sources. The indictment says the program was known within the US intelligence community by a code name used so agents could communicate openly without revealing the true nature of their operations.
Witt’s Air Force service ended in 2008.
Government contracting and education
From 2008 to 2010, Witt worked as a government contractor while collaborating with AFOSI, according to the document. The New York Times reported she earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland in 2008 around the time she left the Air Force, and later enrolled in a graduate program in Middle East studies at George Washington University.
Classmates described Witt as reserved and isolated and said she focused on topics such as drone strikes, extrajudicial executions, and atrocities against children. The government alleges that in February 2012, shortly before graduating from George Washington University, Witt set plans in motion to betray the United States and defect to Iran.
That same month, she traveled to Iran to attend the International Hollywoodism Conference in Tehran, an annual anti-Western event held during the Fajr International Film Festival that prosecutors say is intended to condemn US moral standards and promote anti-American propaganda.
During that trip, authorities allege she presented her credentials to the IRGC to demonstrate she was a reliable source of intelligence on US national defense and revealed government secrets. The New York Times reported she was not invited to the conference but was allowed to speak anyway. Prosecutors say she was identified as a US military veteran and made critical statements about the US government, knowing the videos would be circulated by Iranian media. Her public conversion to Islam was also recorded and broadcast by Iranian state television, according to the account.
In May 2012, around the same time she received her graduate degree, the FBI contacted Witt to warn that she was a top target for recruitment by Iranian intelligence services, according to the document.
Defection and travel
By then, prosecutors say, it was too late. Witt had allegedly fallen under the influence of a recruiter working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, in this case Iran. The indictment refers to the recruiter as Individual A, identified by the New York Times as Marzieh Hashemi, a Louisiana-born journalist who became an Iranian citizen and works as an anchor for Iranian state television.
Authorities allege Hashemi traveled to the United States and, together with Witt, filmed an anti-Western propaganda film later distributed in Iran. Over the following year, the indictment says Witt moved from country to country while working with Hashemi to secure permanent residency in Iran, spending part of that period in Dubai and Afghanistan.
Around that time, the FBI issued a missing person statement for Witt, saying that as of July 2013 she was believed to be in Afghanistan or Tajikistan teaching English. Text messages cited by prosecutors described her efforts, including Iranian authorities’ suspicions of Witt and alleged plans to enter Russia covertly and disclose US secrets through WikiLeaks if she could not gain access to Iran. In one message, Witt said she would not travel to Turkey out of fear of that country’s extradition treaty with the United States.
On Aug. 25, 2013, prosecutors say Witt emailed Hashemi with the subject line My biography and professional background, which included additional credentials, her DD-214 certificate of release or discharge from active duty, and her account of converting to Islam. The indictment says that around the same time she searched Facebook for the names of US intelligence assets. That same day, prosecutors say, the email was forwarded to an address associated with the Iranian government.
On Aug. 28, 2013, Witt boarded a flight to Iran. Prosecutors say she texted Hashemi that she was logging off, getting on the move, and heading home.
Life in Iran and related allegations
According to the indictment, immediately after defecting Witt provided Iranian officials with the code name of a Department of Defense Special Access Program. From 2014 through 2015, she is accused of helping prepare target packages for the Iranian government, described as documents assembled to enable a military or intelligence unit to locate, fix, track, and neutralize a threat. Prosecutors allege those packages included the names of US counterintelligence agents.
She is also accused of working with Iranian hackers to develop malicious software designed to record keystrokes, access a target’s webcam, and monitor other computer activity. Prosecutors say the technology was used against US intelligence assets Witt had identified, and that Witt and her co-defendants planned to implant the malware on the computers of US military intelligence employees known to her, primarily by contacting them through Facebook.
Witt was indicted alongside four other alleged co-conspirators tied to the hacking operation. The document says she faces charges including conspiracy to deliver and the delivery of national defense information to representatives of the Iranian government, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, computer intrusion, aggravated identity theft, and aiding and abetting.
In announcing the reward, Daniel Wierzbicki, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, said Witt allegedly betrayed her oath to the Constitution more than a decade ago by defecting to Iran and providing national defense information to the Iranian regime, and that she may continue supporting what he described as its malign activities. He said the FBI has not forgotten the case and believes that during what he called a critical moment in Iran’s history, someone knows something about her whereabouts, and the bureau wants that information to help capture Witt and bring her to justice.
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