A former software engineer for the Central Intelligence Agency has been found guilty of leaking a trove of classified documents to the website WikiLeaks in the biggest theft of secrets in American history.
After a retrial lasting several weeks, a jury on Wednesday convicted 33-year-old Joshua Schulte on all nine counts he faced, including illegally gathering and transmitting national defense information.
The leak, which WikiLeaks dubbed Vault 7 and published in 2017, detailed how the CIA uses intelligence-gathering cyber tools to break into computers, smartphones, messaging applications and television sets undetected.
WikiLeaks said Vault 7 was the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency. The website explained that the data was provided anonymously by a "source" who wanted to raise policy questions, specifically whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency.
Schulte, who defended himself at trial, told jurors the CIA singled him out of hundreds of people and made him a scapegoat for the embarrassing public release of secrets by WikiLeaks, NPR reported.
Prosecutors argued that Schulte, who helped the CIA create hacking tools, was motivated to arrange the leak because he believed the agency had disrespected him by ignoring his complaints about the work environment, according to NPR.
Schulte had access to "some of the country's most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe," Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement applauding the verdict.
"When Schulte began to harbor resentment toward the CIA, he covertly collected those tools and provided them to WikiLeaks, making some of our most critical intelligence tools known to the public -- and therefore, our adversaries," Williams said. "Schulte was aware that the collateral damage of his retribution could pose an extraordinary threat to this nation if made public, rendering them essentially useless, having a devastating effect on our intelligence community by providing critical intelligence to those who wish to do us harm."
Williams called it "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history."
The verdict came two years after a hung jury failed to agree on eight of the 10 charges Schulte faced, the New York Times reported.
Schulte now faces a maximum combined sentence of 80 years in prison, according to The Times. A sentencing date has not been set.
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