Former CIA official Joshua Adam Schulte was charged in a new 13-count indictment in relation to the unauthorized theft and disclosure of classified national defense information from the agency, the Justice Department announced Monday.
Schulte took the information that “concerned among other things, the intelligence gathering capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Agency” in 2016 and then submitted it to an unnamed organization that claims to publicly disseminate classified, sensitive, and confidential information, the indictment says.
WikiLeaks is not mentioned by name, but the organization did publish last year some of the CIA’s hacking tools in what became known as the “Vault 7” collection.
“Leaks of classified information pose a danger to the security of all Americans,” John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement. “It adds insult to injury when, as alleged here, the leaks come from former government officials in whom Americans placed their sacred trust.”
“As alleged, Schulte utterly betrayed this nation and downright violated his victims. As an employee of the CIA, Schulte took an oath to protect this country, but he blatantly endangered it by the transmission of Classified Information,” William Sweeney Jr., head of the New York FBI office, said in a statement.
Schulte’s lawyer Sabrina Shroff said Monday that, “When all the evidence is clear, he’s hardly the villain that the government tries to make him out to be,” according to the Associated Press.
Schulte was previously charged with the receipt possession and transportation of child pornography and criminal copyright infringement.
Schulte is currently detained due to the child pornography charges.
