WikiLeaks returns fire after CIA Director Mike Pompeo vows US retaliation

“I’m confident this administration will pursue them with great vigor,” Pompeo said Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

WikiLeaks tweeted a link to an archived copy of a now-deleted tweet from Pompeo in July 2016, who was then a Kansas Republican lawmaker, calling attention to the group’s publication of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

WikiLeaks shared a link to a YouTube video highlighting Pompeo’s criticism of the group, whose “currency” he said is “clickbait,” and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. In a somewhat tongue-and-cheek fashion the group also linked to what it boasts to be 2.3 million documents from the Assad regime in Syria.

In another tweet, the group took the opportunity to fundraise off of Pompeo’s remarks, adding the hashtag #Vault7, a reference to WikiLeaks’ recently begun series of leaks which claim to reveal the CIA’s program for hacking into consumer devices made in Europe and the U.S.

WikiLeaks also took umbrage with Pompeo’s accusation that it has “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.”

The group said Pompeo made a “vow to strip First Amendment protections from WikiLeaks over its #Vault7 series.”

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in a report in January that Russian operatives used WikiLeaks, among other groups, to help it undermine the 2016 presidential election in favor of President Trump.