WikiLeaks a hostile agency helped by Russia: CIA chief

TIL Desk/World/Washington/ New CIA Director Mike Pompeo has termed whistle-blower collective WikiLeaks, whose leaking of classified documents have embarrassed the US, a “non-state hostile intelligence” agency which is often helped by Russia. In his first public address as the Central Intelligence Agency chief, Pompeo said “it is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

He said US intelligence services had found that Russian state-owned television network RT actively collaborated with the website. Pompeo, a former Republican Congressmen who once applauded disclosures by WikiLeaks, said the intelligence community at CIA finds the celebration of entities like WikiLeaks “both perplexing and deeply troubling”.

“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” he said. But his harshest words were directed at its founder Julian Assange, and at former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who had leaked classified documents from the National Security Agency in 2013. “(They) seek to use that information to make a name for themselves” and “care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security”.