Joshua Schulte, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been charged with allegedly using his access at the agency to transmit the classified documents known as the Vault 7 leaks to the WikiLeaks organization. He was already in jail on charges regarding child pornography.
In March of 2017, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a raid on the apartment of Joshua A. Schulte, seeking out Top Secret documents and hacking tools that had been leaked to WikiLeaks earlier in the month. While the search warrant sought evidence related to national security, what they instead found was even more disturbing.
Over 10,000 images of child porn were found on an encrypted virtual machine on his personal computer. FBI computer scientists were able to identify the encrypted container containing these files under three layers of password protection. The encryption was defeated by utilizing passwords that were recovered from one of Schulte’s cellphones. They also found chat logs discussing the distribution of child porn, as well as Internet searches for these types of perversions.
USA Berman: Joshua Schulte, a former employee of the CIA, allegedly used his access at the agency to transmit classified material to an outside organization. During the course of this investigation, 1/3
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) June 18, 2018
2/3 federal agents also discovered alleged child pornography in Schulte’s NYC residence. We and our law enforcement partners are committed to protecting national security information and ensuring that those trusted to handle it honor their important
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) June 18, 2018
3/3 responsibilities. Unlawful disclosure of classified intelligence can pose a grave threat to our national security, potentially endangering the safety of Americans.
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) June 18, 2018
“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. To further endanger those around him, Schulte allegedly received, possessed, and transmitted thousands of child pornographic photos and videos.
In an effort to protect this nation against crimes such as these, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York will continue to keep our mission at the forefront of our investigations in protecting the American public,” wrote William F. Sweeney Jr., FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge of the investigation.
The massive trove of files that Schulte allegedly leaked was called “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange; the leak is considered to be one of the largest in the history of the CIA. The leak included the code for many of the CIA’s hacking and surveillance tools, to include providing details on how the CIA can take over an iPhone or turn your smart television into a device that allows surveillance of the room it is installed in.
Schulte apparently worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for several months in 2010, before starting at the CIA in May of that year as a software engineer that designed many of the tools that were leaked to the public. He left the CIA in November 2016 and worked for Bloomberg until the time of the leaks and his arrest.
Schulte faces thirteen separate charges and could face up to 135 years in prison if found guilty on all counts. The prosecution of this case is being handled by the US attorney’s office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. WikiLeaks has alleged that in charging Schulte for child porn the Department of Justice is “perhaps reflecting weakness of CIA case.”
As the charge sheet shows, the child porn carries much heavier jail time than any individual charge related to the leaks of classified documents.
