US Court convicts former CIA engineer for theft of secret information sold to Wikileaks

A court in the United States (US) had in Wednesday convicted former CIA programmer, Joshua Schulte, for theft of secret intelligence information identified to constitute ‘Vault 7’ breach, which was sold to WikiLeaks

The  US Justice Department had lamented that convicted former CIA programmer of federal charges over the massive Vault 7 theft of secret information provided to WikiLeaks, constituted  “one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history.”

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York,  in a statement, revealed that Joshua Adam Schulte was a CIA programmer “with access to some of the country’s most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe.”

Williams declared that when Schulte “began to harbor resentment toward the CIA, he covertly collected those tools and provided them to WikiLeaks, making some of our most critical intelligence tools known to the public – and therefore, our adversaries.”

He asserted: “Moreover, Schulte was aware that the collateral damage of his retribution could pose an extraordinary threat to this nation if made public, rendering them essentially useless, having a devastating effect on our intelligence community by providing critical intelligence to those who wish to do us harm.”

Schulte, defending himself at a New York City retrial, argued in closing arguments that “the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for an embarrassing public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017.”
it was gathered that U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman proclaimed the guilty verdict on nine counts, which was reached in mid-afternoon by a jury that had deliberated since Friday.

The Associated Press reported.

The vault 7 leak was said to have exposed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.

Schulte, before his arrest, had assisted in creating the hacking devices as a coder at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The court reserved the sentencing date since Schulte is still awaiting trial on charges of possessing and transporting child pornography, to which he had pleaded not guilty.