Joshua Schulte
 Joshua Schulte    (whistleblower) | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Joshua Adam Schulte 25 September 1988 |
Joshua Adam Schulte is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who is suspected of being involved in a leak of classified documents ("Vault 7") to WikiLeaks,[1] which some have called "the largest loss of classified documents in the agency’s history and a huge embarrassment for CIA officials."[2]
Arrest
Schulte was arrested in August 2017 on child pornography charges.[3]
Trial
In February 2020, nearly three years after WikiLeaks’ publishing of “Vault 7” content in March 2017, Schulte appeared in a federal court in Manhattan as his defence and the CIA’s prosecutors delivered their opening arguments.
David Denton, assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, contended that Schulte had carried out the “ultimate act of betrayal” against the CIA and, according to a notebook recovered from his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, kept “a detailed battle plan” for his “information war,” reported the New York Daily News. The prosecution claimed Schulte clearly had a grudge against the agency and that he wrote “Top secret? F**k your top secret!” in his notebook.
Sabrina Shroff, Schulte’s defence attorney, argued that the 31-year-old was being made a scapegoat to cover up for the agency’s “wide open” system that stored the now-leaked information:
- “After nearly three years, this massive CIA leak still remains a mystery,” she said, asserting that it was an open secret that the system was vulnerable. “Hundreds of people could have and did have the opportunity to take that information. The CIA went a whole year without knowing that their super-secure system had been hacked."
Joshua Schulte, who pleaded not guilty, faced a total of 11 criminal counts, including theft of government property and lying to the FBI, the most serious of which carries a 10-year prison sentence.[4]
Trial Transcripts
Transcripts of the trial proceedings are being purchased and posted online in an indexed library format by Alexa O'brien and the Calyx Institute [5]
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Julian Assange denied access to lawyers, visitors in Britain’s Belmarsh prison | Article | 24 April 2019 | Oscar Grenfell | Chelsea Manning’s punitive detention is a warning of the treatment that will be meted out to Julian Assange if he is extradited to the US |
| Document:Julian Assange makes first public statement since prison release | blog post | 1 October 2024 | Andy Worthington | "Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroad. I fear that unless norm-setting institutions like PACE wake up to the gravity of the situation it will be too late. Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom never dims, that the pursuit of truth will live on, and that the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few." |
References
- ↑ "U.S. identifies suspect in major leak of CIA hacking tools"
- ↑ "Ex-CIA man Joshua Schulte charged over biggest leak of secrets"
- ↑ "WHO IS JOSHUA ADAM SCHULTE? EX-CIA PROGRAMMER FACING CHILD PORN CHARGES IS SUSPECT IN VAULT 7 LEAK"
- ↑ "‘F**k Your Top Secret!’: Trial Begins for Ex-CIA Employee Accused of ‘Vault 7’ Leak"
- ↑ Joshua Shulte trail proceedings transcripts
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