CIA Director Mike Pompeo ripped into WikiLeaks on Thursday, calling the controversial document-sharing website a "non-state hostile intelligence service."
"It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," Pompeo said, The Hill reports.
The intelligence boss tore into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen" for baring harmful information about democratic governments instead of going after dangerous regimes.
Pompeo said Assange and Edward Snowden, the ex-National Security Agency worker who leaked who classified data about the agency's information-collecting methods as "having done great harm to our nation's national security."
His criticism of WikiLeaks flies in the face of President Donald Trump's approval of it during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Assange publishing hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair.
"I love WikiLeaks," Trump gushed.
Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 when President Rafael Correa granted him asylum.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.