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CIA Director Pompeo: WikiLeaks a “Hostile Intelligence Service”

HeadlineApr 14, 2017

CIA chief Mike Pompeo blasted WikiLeaks Thursday as a “hostile intelligence service,” in a stark reversal from his previous praise for the group. Pompeo made the remarks at a Washington, D.C., think tank in his first public address as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mike Pompeo: “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. … In reality, they champion nothing but their own celebrity. Their currency is clickbait; their moral compass, nonexistent; their mission, personal self-aggrandizement through destruction of Western values.”

Pompeo went on to call WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a “narcissist” and a “fraud” who would have sided with dictators in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Last July, then-Congressmember Pompeo praised WikiLeaks for publishing emails hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee, writing in a tweet that has since been deleted, “Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by Wikileaks.”

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