The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is offering a $200,000 reward for former Air Force operative Monica Witt, who authorities believe defected to Iran in 2013.
In a statement on Thursday, the agency said that she is believed to “likely still be involved in supporting Iran’s illicit activities.”
“The FBI has not forgotten and believes that during this critical moment in Iran’s history, there is someone who knows something about her whereabouts,” said Daniel Wierzbicki, FBI’s top counterintelligence official in Washington.
“The FBI wants to hear from you so you can help us apprehend Witt and bring her to justice,” it said.
Witt, a former counterintelligence officer with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, worked on assignments in the Middle East from 2003 to 2008.
In 2019, then-Assistant Attorney General John Demers alleged Iran recruited Witt, who later defected and allegedly exposed a “highly classified intelligence collection program” and identified a US intelligence officer, “thereby risking the life of this individual.”
Prosecutors alleged that between January 2012 and May 2015, Witt conspired with Iranians in Iran and elsewhere outside the US to provide “documents and information relating to the national defense of the United States, with the intent and reason to believe that the same would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of Iran.”
According to the indictment, after her defection, Iranian officials supplied Witt with “goods and services, including housing and computer equipment,” to support her work. It remains unclear whether she has US legal representation.
