CIA Director Mike Pompeo (C) sits between former Sen. Pat Roberts (L) and former Sen. Bob Dole during Pompeo's confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 12. On Thursday, Pompeo decried WikiLeaks as a hostile intelligence service. File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI |
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April 14 (UPI) -- CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a "hostile agent" in service to U.S. rivals in a Washington, D.C., speech.
Speaking before an audience of foreign policy experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday evening, Pompeo said, "WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service," adding that "it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from antidemocratic countries."
He referred to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as "a narcissist who has created nothing of value. He is a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen." He accused Assange of serving anti-American dictators "as they try unsuccessfully to cloak themselves and their actions in the language of liberty and privacy."
Pompeo said the United States established that Russian military intelligence used WikiLeaks to release information it found about the Democratic National Committee, and called RT, Russia's state-owned television network, a WikiLeaks collaborator and Russia's "primary propaganda outlet."
It was Pompeo's first speech as CIA director, and his remarks indicated that members of the administration of President Donald Trump feel no obligation to hold to opinions offered during the 2016 presidential election, The New York Times said Friday. In July Pompeo wrote favorably about WikiLeaks in a Twitter statement referring to emails stolen by Russian hackers indicating that Democratic Party leaders preferred Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders as a candidate.
"Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama [President Barack Obama] on down? BUSTED: 19, 252 Emails from DNC Leaked by WikiLeaks," it read.
During the campaign, Pompeo also said that "Russian military intelligence, the GRU, had used WikiLeaks to release data of U.S. victims that the GRU had obtained through cyberoperations against the Democratic National Committee."
Trump, in an Oct. 10 campaign speech, said, "I love WikiLeaks!"
