Ex-CIA Software Engineer Who Sent Secrets to WikiLeaks Sentenced to 40 Years

So the guy who did the leaks had child pornography?

Is this actually true? Pretty easy to set someone up for that after you grab their computers.

If it is true that he had the images on his computer, who was doing the abusing? If he’s a spy, doing an investigation into the CIA, it would make sense he would come across that imagery, no?

This whole case took place in the dark, so none of the obvious questions were ever asked, let alone answered.

The Guardian:

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) software engineer who was convicted for carrying out the largest theft of classified information in the agency’s history and of charges related to child abuse imagery was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday.

The 40-year sentence by US district judge Jesse Furman was for “crimes of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography”, federal prosecutors said in a statement. The judge did not impose a life sentence as sought by prosecutors.

Yeah, it’s pretty incredible to have that list of crimes of opposing the government and then have child porn tacked on.

Should that at least have been a totally different case, as it’s a totally different crime?

Joshua Schulte was convicted in July 2022 on four counts each of espionage and computer hacking and one count of lying to FBI agents, after giving classified materials to the whistleblowing agency WikiLeaks in the so-called Vault 7 leak. Last August, a judge mostly upheld the conviction.

Joshua Schulte

WikiLeaks in March 2017 began publishing the materials, which concerned how the CIA surveilled foreign governments, alleged extremists and others by compromising their electronics and computer networks.

Prosecutors also said Schulte received thousands of images and videos of child sexual abuse, and that they found the material in Schulte’s New York apartment, in an encrypted container beneath three layers of password protection, during the CIA leaks investigation.

He received them from who? And to what end? What was the context?

You might be thinking “well, just read the court documents.”

It’s not there. No one was charged with sending the images. No “child porn network” went down, as is generally the case in these cases.

They can put this sex stuff out against people, and everyone will distance themselves. They did it to Assange, remember? They said he “raped” a girl by taking a condom off during sex. Recently, they did it to Russell Brand. They always attach this sex stuff to people.

Maybe some of it’s true. “Child porn on a secret encrypted drive” sounds untrue to me, frankly, but even if some of the stuff is true, it’s always used as a tactic (maybe Julian took the condom off, who knows – that isn’t a serious allegation, because who doesn’t take the condom off? It’s only illegal in Sweden).

They always isolate people and make them indefensible, always through sexual allegations.