Ex-CIA computer engineer gets 40 years in prison for giving spy agency hacking secrets to WikiLeaks

The bulk of the punishment dealt to Schulte, 35, came as a result of the release of a collection of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017. Schulte has been in jail since 2018.

Judge Jesse M. Furman stated that “We will likely never know the full extent of the damage, but I have no doubt it was massive.” regarding the sentence announcement.

The breach, known as the Vault 7 leak, disclosed how the CIA manipulated Apple and Android smartphones and attempted to turn Internet-connected televisions into listening devices. Prior to his arrest, Schulte had assisted in creating the hacking tools as a coder at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

In a request for a life sentence, Assistant US Attorney David William Denton Jr. asserted that Schulte was responsible for “the most damaging disclosures of classified information in American history”.

When given the opportunity to speak, Schulte complained mostly about harsh conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, referring to his cell as “My torture cage.”

He also claimed that prosecutors had once offered him a plea deal that would have resulted in a 10-year prison sentence and contended that it was unfair of them to now seek a life term. He said that he rejected the deal because he would have been required to relinquish his right to appeal.

Immediately afterward, the judge criticized some of Schulte’s thirty minute speech, expressing that he was “blown away” by Schulte’s “complete lack or remorse and acceptance of responsibility”.

The judge stated that Schulte was “not driven by any sense of altruism”, but instead was “motivated by anger, spite and perceived grievance” against others at the agency who he believed had ignored his complaints about the work environment.

Furman also mentioned that Schulte continued his crimes from behind bars by attempting to release more classified materials and by creating a hidden file on his computer that contained 2,400 images of child sexual abuse that he continued to view from jail.

During a two-hour proceeding, Furman referred to a one-page letter the government received from CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen, who described Schulte’s crimes as causing “exceptionally grave harm to US national security and the CIA”.

He added: “His actions cost the Agency hundreds of millions of dollars; degraded its ability to collect foreign intelligence against America’s adversaries; placed directly at risk CIA personnel, programs, and assets; and jeopardized US national security by degrading the CIA’s ability to conduct its mission. In short, Mr. Schulte’s actions inflicted heavy costs on the United States.”

A mistrial was declared at Schulte’s original 2020 trial after jurors deadlocked on the most serious counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information. He was convicted at a July 2022 trial of charges in connection with the classified leak.

Last fall, he was convicted in the case over the child sexual abuse images, which originated when a computer that Schulte possessed after he left the CIA and moved to New York from Virginia was found to contain the images and videos that he had downloaded from the Internet from 2009 to March 2017.

The judge described that trial as “a bloodbath” in which “Mr. Schulte had no defense.”

Yet, Furman noted, Schulte was unable to express remorse for those crimes either.

Of the 40 year sentence, Furman said the bulk of it was for the CIA theft while six years and eight months of it were for the convictions over the child sexual abuse materials.

In a statement afterward, US Attorney Damian Williams said Schulte “betrayed his country by committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history”.

“When the FBI caught him,” Williams continued, “Schulte doubled down and tried to cause even more harm to this nation by waging what he described as an ‘information war’ of publishing top secret information from behind bars.” – AP