She received Arabic language training from 1975 to 1977 in Beirut and Tunis and was assigned in February 1977 to the United States Consulate General in Jerusalem as vice-consul and post visa officer.

[3] In May 1978, Johnson's superiors at the consulate approved her draft of a cable to the Department of State describing the abusive interrogation methods that her interviewees claimed that Israeli authorities had used, including "beating with sticks and whips, prolonged immersion in cold water, hanging by the hands and sexual sadism.

[6] On February 7, 1979, The Washington Post published a story about Johnson's cables, indicating that they had influenced the Department of State's decision to describe Israeli abuse of Arab detainees as a "systematic practice" in its annual human rights country report on Israel sent to Congress a few days earlier.

[7] Time magazine later reported that Israel's security agency Shin Bet, with the approval of Federal Bureau of Investigation attachés at the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv, had put Johnson under surveillance and wiretapped her telephone while she was still posted to Jerusalem.

Explaining the relationship to The New York Times, Johnson said that after the man received his visa and went to the United States, he wrote her a letter proposing marriage and that she accepted after visiting him in Chicago in 1978.