A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) software engineer CIA charged with carrying out the most significant theft of classified data in the agency's history was convicted on all counts in federal court Wednesday.
Joshua Schulte 33, was convicted by jurors in a Manhattan federal court on eight espionage charges and one obstruction charge over the so-called Vault 7 leak. He worked for the CIA's elite hacking unit and created cyber tools that could grab data undetected from computers. After quitting his job, Schulte sent the tools to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
Vault 7 consisted of nearly 9,000 pages and shed light on a host of hacking methodologies employed by the agency. This included hacking of Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and a bid to turn internet-linked televisions into listening devices.
Schulte had 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," US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams stated.
"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 our adversaries.”
He also allegedly lied to CIA and FBI investigators to conceal his tracks and was arrested in August 2017 on child pornography charges. He was indicted on the charges related to the data breach months later.
"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," Williams added. “Today, Schulte has been convicted for one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history."
During the closing arguments to jurors, Schulte, who chose to defend himself at a New York City retrial, accused the CIA and FBI of making him a scapegoat for the WikiLeaks release. Schulte claimed he was made a scapegoat even though “hundreds of people had access to (the information). … Hundreds of people could have stolen it”, AP news agency reported.
