- Former CIA director says he had agents ‘help Biden’ campaign Daily Mail
- Biden campaign, Blinken orchestrated intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story, ex-CIA official says Fox News
- Ex-CIA chief spills on how he got spies to write false Hunter Biden laptop letter to ‘help Biden’ New York Post
- Biden Campaign Played Active Role in Suppressing Hunter Biden Laptop Story, Congressional Testimony Reveals Yahoo News
- Jordan torches Biden: He made Hunter laptop intel letter ‘seem organic’ after Blinken outed as ‘impetus’ Fox News
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Tag Archives: CIA
Former top intel chiefs silent after Musk Twitter disclosures
America’s top former intelligence officials were silent Saturday after the release of internal Twitter documents detailing how The Post’s bombshell revelations were censored by the social media company.
Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary, John Brennan a former CIA director, Mike Hayden, a former CIA director, and Jim Clapper, a former director of national intelligence — who all once said The Post’s reporting had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” — declined or did not respond to request for comment about whether the latest disclosures had changed their opinion.
The quartet made their allegations as part of an open letter denigrating The Post’s reporting as Russian misinformation which was signed by dozens of other longtime intelligence hands.
“Our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case,” the letter read. “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
Of the four, only Clapper has ever publicly addressed the letter, offering a vigorous defense to The Post in March.
“Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph,” he said referring to an area of the letter where the signatories admit they do not have any material evidence of Russian involvement. “I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.”
CIA director visits Kyiv amid Russian missile strikes across Ukraine
CNN
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CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his intelligence counterparts on Tuesday, according to a US official.
Burns, the official said, was safely in the US Embassy during Russian missile strikes across the country, including blasts that rocked the nation’s capital.
The CIA director’s trip to Kyiv came on the heels of a Monday meeting in Ankara, Turkey, with his Russian intelligence counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin – and it is the second known time in less than a month that he has visited Kyiv.
While there, the official said, Burns “discussed the US warning he delivered to the head of Russia’s SVR not to use nuclear weapons and reinforced the US commitment to provide support to Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.”
The flurry of back-channel communications comes less than a week after Russia announced a withdrawal from a key Ukrainian city and a quiet debate has begun in Washington over whether or not to encourage Ukraine to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the war. It also comes as the US has grown increasingly concerned that Russia could turn to a nuclear weapon in its struggling attack.
Burns and other US officials have said publicly that they see no evidence that Moscow is actively preparing to take such a step, but officials familiar with the intelligence warn that the risk is perhaps the highest it has been since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
President Joe Biden has leaned heavily on Burns, an experienced diplomat with deep experience in Russia, as a quiet messenger in the ongoing conflict.
Burns was sent to Ankara on Monday to “communicate with Russia on managing risk, especially nuclear risk and risks to strategic stability,” a national security spokesman said. The spokesman emphasized that he did not conduct negotiations of any kind.
In Kyiv in October, he “reinforced the US commitment to provide support to Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, including continued intelligence sharing,” a US official told CNN at the time.
Burns was sent to Moscow last November, before Russia invaded Ukraine, to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of an invasion. He has also been involved in discussions with Naryshkin about US citizens detained in Russia, including Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.
CIA boss talks nuclear weapons and prisoners with Putin’s spy chief
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns was expected to caution President Vladimir Putin’s spy chief at talks on Monday about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and to raise the issue of U.S. prisoners in Russia, a White House official said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Russian news agencies that a U.S.-Russia meeting had taken place in the Turkish capital Ankara but declined to give details about the participants or the subjects discussed.
The White House spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Burns was meeting Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service.
It was the first known high-level, face-to-face U.S.-Russian contact since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
“He is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
“He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability … He will also raise the cases of unjustly detained U.S. citizens.”
Burns is a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who was sent to Moscow in late 2021 by President Joe Biden to caution Putin about the troop build-up around Ukraine.
“We briefed Ukraine in advance on his trip. We firmly stick to our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
Putin has repeatedly said Russia will defend its territory with all available means, including nuclear weapons, if attacked. He says the West has engaged in nuclear blackmail against Russia.
MANY OUTSTANDING ISSUES
The remarks raised particular concern in the West after Moscow declared in September that it had annexed four Ukrainian regions that its forces partly control.
The U.S.-Russian contact in Turkey was first reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. The SVR did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond the war, Russia and the United States have a host of outstanding issues to discuss, ranging from the extension of a nuclear arms reduction treaty and a Black Sea grain deal to a possible prisoner swap and the Syrian civil war.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, asked at a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies in Indonesia about the meeting in Turkey, said the United Nations was not involved.
Biden said this month he hoped Putin would be willing to discuss seriously a swap to secure the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony on drugs charges.
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who holds American, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian jail after being convicted of spying, a charge he denied.
Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States, has been mentioned as a person who could be swapped for Griner and Whelan in any prisoner exchange.
Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer in Turkey; Editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
CIA Director Bill Burns meeting with Russian counterpart Monday
CNN
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CIA Director Bill Burns is meeting with his Russian intelligence counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, in Ankara Monday as part of an ongoing effort by the US to “communicate with Russia on managing risk” and to discuss the cases of “unjustly detained US citizens,” a National Security Council spokesperson tells CNN.
“We have been very open about the fact that we have channels to communicate with Russia on managing risk, especially nuclear risk and risks to strategic stability,” the spokesperson said. “As part of this effort, Bill Burns is in Ankara today to meet with his Russian intelligence counterpart.”
CNN has previously reported that national security adviser Jake Sullivan has also been in touch with his Russian counterparts to warn them of the consequences should Russia use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
The spokesperson emphasized that Burns “is not conducting negotiations of any kind.”
“He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine. He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability. He will also raise the cases of unjustly detained US citizens.”
The spokesperson added that the US briefed Ukraine on the meeting in advance of Burns’ trip.
“We firmly stick to our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
The Biden administration has dispatched Burns several times over the last year for talks with the Russians, using the veteran diplomat and former US ambassador to Russia as a key intermediary as US-Russia relations have continued to decline. Burns was sent to Moscow last November, before Russia invaded Ukraine, to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of an invasion. He has also been involved in discussions with Naryshkin about US citizens detained in Russia, including Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.
The discussions are also part of an ongoing effort by the US to keep the lines of communication open with Moscow amid thinly veiled threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia could use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
“In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff,” Putin warned in a speech in September.
He later appeared to reverse himself, saying in October that “we see no need for” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu also spoke by phone late last month for the first time since May, as intelligence surfaced that Russian military officials had discussed how and under what conditions Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, CNN has previously reported.
Russian officials also last month began alleging that Ukraine is preparing to use a “dirty bomb”– an allegation the US worried was simply a pretext for Russia to use one itself, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency debunked after an investigation of Ukrainian sites.
The US has still not seen any signs that Putin has decided to take the drastic step of using a nuclear weapon, officials said.
The CIA wants to bring woolly mammoths back from extinction
The CIA is funding research into resurrecting extinct animals — including the woolly mammoth and tiger-like thylacine — according to news reports.
Via a venture capital investment firm called In-Q-Tel, which the CIA funds, the American intelligence agency has pledged money to the Texas-based tech company Colossal Biosciences. According to Colossal’s website, the company’s goal is to “see the woolly mammoth thunder upon the tundra once again” through the use of genetic engineering — that is, using technology to edit an organism’s DNA.
Colossal has also stated an interest in resurrecting the extinct thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger — a wolf-like marsupial that went extinct in the 1930s — as well as the extinct dodo bird.
For their part, the CIA is less interested in thundering mammoths and roaring thylacines than it is in the underlying genetic engineering technology that Colossal intends to develop, according to an In-Q-Tel blog post.
“Strategically, it’s less about the mammoths and more about the capability,” In-Q-Tel’s senior officials wrote.
De-extinction may sound like science fiction — and, to an extent, it is. There is no way to bring back the woolly mammoth as it was ten thousand years ago; however, by using DNA editing tools, scientists can insert cold-resistant characteristics into the DNA sequences of modern elephants, making them genetically similar to woolly mammoths. The resulting creature wouldn’t be a mammoth, per se; rather, it would be a proxy animal that’s more like an elephant with mammoth-like characteristics.
The foundation of this process is a gene editing method called CRISPR — genetic “scissors” that scientists can use to cut, paste and replace specific gene sequences into an organism’s DNA. (Several of the researchers behind CRISPR won the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry).
According to the In-Q-Tel blog post, investing in this project will help the U.S. government to “set the ethical, as well as the technological, standards” for genetic engineering technology, and keep the U.S. a step ahead of competing nations that may also be interested in reading, writing and altering genetic code.
Not everyone is so optimistic about using genetic engineering tools to revive extinct animals. Critics have warned that, even if a company is able to engineer a healthy proxy mammoth, the mammoth’s natural habitat no longer exists — and, even if it did, genetic code cannot teach an animal how to thrive in an unfamiliar ecosystem, according to Gizmodo. Some scientists also argue that money spent on de-extinction projects could go much further if applied to the conservation of living animals.
Former CIA Chief Says Putin Is ‘Literally Out of Moves’ in Ukraine
- Putin is out of options in Ukraine, according to retired Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director.
- Putin’s recent “desperate” steps, including mobilization and annexations, won’t change the situation, he said.
- “Ukraine has a vastly more capable and larger force” at this point in the war, he said.
Retired US Army Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director, told CNBC on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a “desperate” situation in Ukraine.
Putin is “literally out of moves,” Petraeus said, adding, “He’s trying all these different desperate actions. But the fact is the reality that confronts Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine is that Ukraine has a vastly more capable and larger force than the country that is more than three times their size.”
Expanding on how the war reached this point, Petraeus said that Ukraine’s full mobilization at the start of the conflict and receipt of billions in aid from Western countries gave it an advantage over Russia, which until recently resisted any level of mobilization.
Russia is believed to have suffered tremendous losses in battle. In August, the Pentagon said the US estimates that Russia has suffered as many as 80,000 casualties — an astonishing number in less than a year of war. Russia is also estimated to have lost thousands of armored vehicles and has pulled obsolete, Soviet-era equipment out of storage to fill the gaps in its ranks.
And now Russia is mobilizing more troops to fight in Ukraine. Western officials and military experts have said that Putin’s recent mobilization decision is a sign that Russia is failing in Ukraine, while emphasizing that the draft is unlikely to change the situation on the battlefield because those being called up have little to no training.
The mobilization has also been messy, with thousands of Russian men fleeing the country. Petraeus suggested that the mobilization has probably seen more Russian men leave the country than head to conscription centers, saying this is not how a country generates “capable and competent and well-equipped forces.”
“The reality on the battlefield now is desperate for Putin,” the former CIA director said, “There’s literally nothing he can do. It is irreversible.”
Petraeus underscored that the “momentum on the battlefield is very much against Russia” with its forces “scrambling just to establish new defensive positions.”
Last week, Putin annexed four regions of Ukraine following referendums that were decried worldwide as a sham. But almost as soon as Putin made the announcement, Ukrainian forces recaptured territory from Russia within those territories. “The Ukrainians are already taking back these areas that have been annexed about as quickly as Russia can annex them,” Petraeus said.
That said, the retired general argued that there’s still “an enormous amount of damage and destruction that Russia can do.”
“They will continue to punish Ukraine on a daily basis with missiles and rockets and bombs and so forth. But at the end of the day, they cannot reverse the situation on the battlefield, which is going to see Ukraine taking back the territory that Russia has taken since 24 February, and perhaps taking back everything that Russia has taken from them since 2014,” Petraeus said.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Western officials and Russia watchers have repeatedly expressed concerns that as Russia struggles on the battlefield the likelihood of Putin resorting to a tactical nuclear weapon goes up. Putin has made multiple nuclear threats since the war began, and Petraeus said this should be taken “very seriously.”
But he said that even if Putin employed a tactical nuclear weapon, it would not fundamentally change the situation on the battlefield for Russia.
“It probably makes it worse. Yes, there will be considerable death and destruction, and radiation,” Petraeus said, “But it won’t reverse the situation in which Ukraine has a vastly bigger and better and more capable force than does Russia.”
The former CIA chief said his top concern regarding Ukraine is the conflict “spiraling out of control.”
“I think it is legitimate for US leadership and for leadership of other countries to avoid starting World War III, as the phrase has been termed,” he said, adding that this is why it’s “so important” for the US to make clear to Russia there would be severe consequences if a nuclear weapon is used.
“But we don’t want to start getting into some kind of climbing the nuclear ladder with Russia,” he said.
The Biden administration in late September said it has privately warned Russia the US would respond “decisively” if a nuclear weapon is used, telling Moscow there would be “catastrophic consequences.”
Addressing concerns that the Russian leader could take such drastic steps if he feels backed into a corner, Petraeus said he doesn’t believe Putin is “suicidal” and doesn’t want “to bring about the end of the Russian Federation as he knows it.” He said the Russian leader still has “a lot” to lose, including his position.
Al Qaeda leader Al-Zawahiri dead after drone strike on home in Kabul
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed at the home of an FBI-wanted Taliban lackey who was once given a platform by the New York Times.
The jihadist, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, was taken out by a CIA-issued drone strike Sunday morning at a Kabul home belonging to senior Taliban official Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to initial reporting by Gray Lady herself.
The publication infamously published an op-ed penned by Haqqani — the leader of the insurgent Haqqani Network in Afghanistan linked to brutal and deadly attacks — to ask for a peace agreement between US and Afghan leaders in 2020.
The paper was slammed by critics and even its own reporters for giving the global terrorist a microphone to thousands of readers to spew what many saw as thinly-veiled propaganda. The Times defended its decision to publish the piece at the time.
Now the Times is being accused of “stealth-editing” their reporting on the killing of al-Zawahri to remove details of the initial report specifically naming Haqqani.
“According to one American analyst, the house that was struck was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government whom American officials say is close to senior Qaeda figures,” the Times wrote in his initial reporting.
However, that paper axed that paragraph without an editor’s note and later replaced it with language that failed to name Haqqani specifically, as first pointed out by Pluribus editor Jeryl Bier.
“After the strike, members of the Haqqani network, a terrorist group that is part of the Taliban government, tried to conceal that Mr. Zawahri had been at the house and restrict access to the site, according to a senior administration official. But the official said the United States had multiple intelligence threads confirming that Mr. Zawahri was killed in the strike,” the Times wrote in the updated story.
Critics of the newspaper suggested the publication removed the initial paragraph linking Haqqani’s role in protecting al-Zawahri due to the backlash it received for publishing the Taliban leader’s op-ed.
However, a Times spokesperson denied such a narrative in a statement to Fox News.
“We regularly edit web stories—especially breaking news stories—to refine the story, add new information, additional context or analysis,” the spokesperson told Fox.
In this case, we updated a complex piece of breaking international news with additional detail from open press briefings. There is absolutely no connection between the editing of this news item and any previous publication by Times Opinion.”
Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban, is on the FBI’s most wanted list for his alleged involvement in a January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen. He is also believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the agency.
The FBI is offering up to a whopping $10 million for information leading directly to his arrest.
EXPLAINER: A look at the missile that killed al-Qaida leader
WASHINGTON (AP) — For a year, U.S. officials have been saying that taking out a terrorist threat in Afghanistan with no American troops on the ground would be difficult but not impossible. Last weekend, the U.S. did just that — killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri with a CIA drone strike.
Other high-profile airstrikes in the past had inadvertently killed innocent civilians. In this case, the U.S. carefully chose to use a type of Hellfire missile that greatly minimized the chance of other casualties. Although U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed which variant of the Hellfire was used, experts and others familiar with counterterrorism operations said a likely option was the highly secretive Hellfire R9X — know by various nicknames, including the “knife bomb” or the “flying Ginsu.”
That potential use of the R9X, said Klon Kitchen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former intelligence analyst, suggests the U.S. wanted to kill al-Zawahri with “limited likelihood of collateral death and destruction and for other relevant political reasons.”
A look at the Hellfire, and how al-Zawahri likely was killed:
WHAT IS A HELLFIRE MISSILE?
Originally designed as an anti-tank missile in the 1980s, the Hellfire has been used by military and intelligence agencies over the last two decades to strike targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
The precision-guided missiles can be mounted on helicopters and unmanned drones and are used widely in combat around the world. More than 100,000 Hellfire missiles have been sold to the U.S. and other countries, according to Ryan Brobst, an analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
“It can do enough damage to destroy most targets such as vehicles and buildings while not doing enough damage to level city blocks and cause significant civilian casualties,” Brobst said.
The U.S. military has routinely used Hellfire missiles to kill high-value targets, including a senior al-Qaida leader in Syria last year, and al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.
WHAT KILLED AL-ZAWAHRI?
The U.S. had multiple options for the attack. It could have used a traditional Hellfire, a bomb dropped from an manned aircraft, or a far more risky assault by ground forces. U.S. Navy SEALs, for example, flew into Pakistan on helicopters and took out Osama bin Laden in a raid.
In this case, the CIA opted for a drone strike. And while the CIA generally doesn’t confirm its counterterrorism missions and closely guards information about strikes it conducts, U.S. government officials have said that two Hellfire missiles were fired at the balcony of the building where al-Zawahri was living in Kabul.
Online images of the building show damage to the balcony, where the U.S. says al-Zawahri was, but the rest of the house is standing and not badly damaged.
Unlike other models of the Hellfire, the R9X doesn’t carry an explosive payload. Instead, it has a series of six rotating blades that emerge on its final approach to a target, Kitchen said. “One of their utilities is in opening up vehicles and other obstructions to get to the target without having to use an explosive warhead,” he said.
AVOIDING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
U.S. officials and experts made clear this week that avoiding civilian casualties was a crucial element in the choice of weapon.
Less than a year ago, a U.S. drone strike — using a more conventional Hellfire missile — struck a white Toyota Corolla sedan in a Kabul neighborhood and killed 10 civilians around and near the car, including seven children. In the midst of the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, American forces believed there were explosives in the car and that it posed an imminent threat to troops on the ground. It was, military leaders said, a “tragic mistake”
One former U.S. official said the likely choice of an R9X is an example of the administration’s effort to find ways to minimize collateral damage and prevent the loss of innocent life. That missile is a very accurate weapon that strikes in a very small area, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss counterterrorism operations.
An administration official said Monday that the U.S. investigated the construction of the house where al-Zawahri was staying in order to ensure that the operation could be done without threatening the structural integrity of the building and also minimizing the risks of killing civilians, including members of his family who were in other parts of the house.
The choice of missile is ultimately one part of reducing the possibility of killing civilians or causing other collateral damage.
“I would say this is by far a lower-risk option,” said Tom Karako, an expert on missile defense at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Using the Hellfire, he said, “reflects a high degree of caution as opposed to a riskiness.”
IS THE US PROVIDING UKRAINE WITH DRONES THAT CAN FIRE HELLFIRE MISSILES?
No. While the U.S. has delivered billions of dollars in military assistance to help Ukraine fight the invading Russian troops, it is wary of providing weapons that could fire deep into Russia, potentially escalating the conflict or drawing the U.S. into the war.
As a result, the U.S. so far has not provided Hellfire missiles or drones that could fire them. Instead, the U.S. has delivered smaller, so-called kamikaze drones, such as the Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost, which instead of firing missiles, explode when they hit a target.
Former CIA employee convicted for carrying out largest data leak in agency’s history
Joshua Schulte — who was accused of handing over reams of classified data to WikiLeaks in 2016 — was convicted of illegally gathering and transmitting national defense information and obstructing a criminal investigation and grand jury proceeding, among other charges.
He had worked as a computer engineer within the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, and created cyber tools that could grab data undetected from computers. Schulte defended himself at trial. An earlier trial ended in a hung jury in 2020.
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,” US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement on Wednesday.
“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’s issues at the CIA began in the summer of 2015 when he began to feud with management and a co-worker, ultimately filing a restraining order against the co-worker in state court, court records show. Schulte and the co-worker were both transferred as a result of the feud.
Investigators alleged that Schulte became enraged when CIA officials wanted to hire a contractor to build a cyber tool similar to one he was building, prosecutors said.
A year later, investigators said Schulte stole cyber tools and source code and transferred them to WikiLeaks, according to court records. He then went on to try to cover his tracks, erasing any and all traces of him accessing the computer system, prosecutors said.
Schulte quit the CIA in November 2016. But in March 2017, WikiLeaks published the first installment of its Vault 7 leaks, which originated from two programs that Schulte had access to, court records show.
WikiLeaks put out a news release to go with the information, saying that the data had been provided anonymously by a source who wanted to raise policy questions, specifically about whether the CIA had overstepped its hacking capabilities and exceeded its authority.
Schulte, who also allegedly lied to CIA and FBI investigators to cover his tracks, was arrested in August 2017 on child pornography charges. He was indicted on the charges related to the data breach months later.
“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 added Wednesday.
“Today, Schulte has been convicted for one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history.”
CNN’s Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.