CIA Director: Time to call out WikiLeaks for what it is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often embedded by state actors like Russia pic.twitter.com/lVuDt2vzNm
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) April 13, 2017
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While Donald Trump has a strange relationship with WikiLeaks, Washington, D.C., and the intelligence agencies have made it clear that they’re no fans of the site. In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C. on Thursday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo didn’t mince words when talking about the organization. Pompeo stated, “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service.”
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While a number of U.S. intelligence agencies have stated that they believe Russian hackers were behind the trove of e-mails released by WikiLeaks, the organization has said that no foreign actors were involved. Pompeo went a step further and said that WikiLeaks “has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.”
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At another point in his speech, Pompeo stated, “That Assange is nothing short of a hero to these terrorists is reprehensible […] frankly our government has not done enough looking at this new risk.” The CIA Director’s attack on WikiLeaks is a change of stance for him, as less than a year ago, he was sharing WikiLeaks documents via Twitter.
Mike Pompeo was sharing Wikileaks documents on his Congressional Twitter account less than a year ago pic.twitter.com/cl5P6vnXSE
— Jessica Schulberg (@jessicaschulb) April 13, 2017