Two former heads of the CIA are expressing suspicion at the timing of the WikiLeaks’ “Vault 7” document dump that claims to offer a look into the agency’s secret hacking program.
The CIA would not confirm or deny on Wednesday whether the 8,761 documents released a day prior are authentic, but former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin said in separate interviews that the WikiLeaks release brought to mind Russian interference allegedly aimed at helping President Trump.
During an afternoon segment on CNN, anchor Jake Tapper asked Hayden if the timing of the WikiLeaks dump was suspicious, considering Trump has complained about several recent leaks that have hurt his administration and Trump supporters have alleged that a so-called “deep state” network of officials are trying to bring him down.
Hayden replied: “I must confess that the thought occurred to me, but I would not suggest it is anything more than perhaps a potential hypothesis.”
Trump had been coming off a particularly turbulent week before the first wave of “Vault 7” hit the Internet. Not only did Trump accuse his predecessor of bugging his New York residence, but before that, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, faced fierce backlash when it was revealed that he failed to disclose communications with a Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearing.
Hayden seemed to suggest that WikiLeaks, and by extension Russia, might be acting as a sort of smokescreen for the president.
“But with regard to the timing, I mean, look, I’m now pretty close to the position that WikiLeaks is acting as an arm, as an agent of the Russian Federation,” Hayden said.
McLaughlin, who served as acting CIA director from July to September 2004 and served four years before that as CIA deputy director, said the “smoke keeps getting thicker and thicker” around a possible link between Russia and the Trump campaign and later administration.
“We don’t know about the timing here but it’s awfully odd that an institution, WikiLeaks, that is clearly linked to Russia,” McLaughlin told MSNBC.
“That’s been established by the intelligence community now, take this is action during a week when the president has created yet another problem for himself with the nutty tweets that he did over the weekend that once again threw the spotlight on this Russia story,” he said, referring to Trump’s tweets on Saturday accusing President Obama for ordering Trump Tower to be wiretapped during the 2016 election.
The president was likely reacting to a Breitbart story published a day prior, which explored conservative radio host Mark Levin’s claim about “police tactics” the Obama administration used to undermine Trump’s campaign. The article discusses reports about the Obama administration applying for a FISA court warrant to tap Trump Tower in New York City to investigate suspected links to Russian banks.
“We have to understand that WikiLeaks is now an instrument of the Russian government,” McLaughlin added.
While the CIA wouldn’t say whether the WikiLeaks documents are real, and would not confirm reports that it is investigating any leaks, it warned that any time WikiLeaks publishes something that could hurt the CIA’s ability to do its job is a problem.
“The American public should be deeply troubled by any Wikileaks disclosure designed to damage the intelligence community’s ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “Such disclosures not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information that do us harm.”
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, to whom Russia has granted asylum after he leaked secret information from the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, tweeted Tuesday that the WikiLeaks dump “looks authentic.”
Trump’s association with Russia has come under intense scrutiny in recent months, especially after Trump openly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and when the intelligence community published a report in January concluding that Russia worked to tip the 2016 election in Trump’s favor through a series of hacks of Democratic officials emails. The report said that Russian operatives chose websites like WikiLeaks to publish the material — a claim that vehemently WikiLeaks denies.
