The Story of an Air Force Defector to Iran

Dario Leone

Security, Middle East

And she had a medal?

Witt was a member of the aircrew of an RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft forward deployed from RAF Mildenhall in Great Britain.

Former Tech. Sgt. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who had defected to Iran and who was charged with espionage on Feb. 13, 2019, served as an airborne crypto linguist on board a RC-135 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Military Times revealed.

She earned the Air Medal as a result. The citation says she had “distinguished herself by meritorious achievement while participating in sustained aerial flight from March 29 to April 18.”

In March 2003, then-Staff Sgt. Witt was serving as an airborne crypto linguist with the 95th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, 398th Air Expeditionary Group, out of Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Crete.

The U.S. invaded Iraq on March 20, followed by three weeks of major combat operations.

Witt was a member of the aircrew of an RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft forward deployed from RAF Mildenhall in Great Britain.