A CIA engineer, who was convicted of leaking documents to WikiLeaks that exposed the agency's mass surveillance activities, has been jailed for 40 years.
Joshua Schulte was sentenced on 2 February, with District Judge Jesse Furman saying the punishment was for "crimes of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of Court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography".
His conviction was announced in a courtroom in Manhattan on 13 June 2022.
The exploits he released were given the name Vault 7 by WikiLeaks which released them from March 2017 upto September the same year.
{loadposition sam08}He was named as a suspect in the theft in May 2018 but the US could not charge him right away due to a lack of evidence.
BREAKING: Alleged WikiLeaks Vault 7 whistleblower Joshua Schulte given a 40 year sentence in a New York federal court today
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 1, 2024
Watch: Inside the CIA's plot to assassinate Julian Assange
The Vault 7 revelations led to a plot by the CIA to assassinate the publisher Julian Assange pic.twitter.com/kr6e2gtwe6
In a statement announcing the 40-year sentence, US attorney Damian Williams said: “Joshua Schulte betrayed his country by committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history.
"He caused untold damage to our national security in his quest for revenge against the CIA for its response to [his] security breaches while employed there.
"When the FBI caught him, 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.
"And all the while, Schulte collected thousands upon thousands of videos and images of children being subjected to sickening abuse for his own personal gratification.
"The outstanding investigative work of the FBI and the career prosecutors in this office unmasked Schulte for the traitor and predator that he is and made sure that he will spend 40 years behind bars – right where he belongs.”