A federal judge in Virginia sentenced the former CIA employee who leaked Israeli military secrets to three years and one month in prison on Wednesday, rejecting the government’s request for a much harsher term.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said she had to balance the potential harm caused by Asif William Rahman’s disclosure of secret analyses of Israel’s plans for an attack on Iran against his swift decision to cooperate and plead guilty to two Espionage Act violations.

While the high school valedictorian and Yale University graduate sat in a green jail jumpsuit at the defense table, Giles gave credit to the defense’s argument that Rahman acted both in response to soaring tensions in the Middle East and out of trauma caused in part by a deployment to Iraq.

“For someone who has lived such a law-abiding life for all these years,” she said, “for you to go from that to this — reckless, dangerous — I understand that something must have been going on.”

In addition to his prison term, she gave Rahman two years’ probation and a $50,000 fine. Rahman’s sentence was significantly lower than the nine years the government requested in a briefing last month — a sentence prosecutors said was warranted by the harm he “could have” caused and ill will........

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