Hacking | WikiLeaks publishes CIA director John Brennan’s emails

CIA Director John Brennan

The WikiLeaks organization posted material Wednesday from what appears to be CIA Director John Brennan›s personal email account, including a draft security clearance application containing personal information.
The material presumably was taken in a compromise of Brennan’s email account by a hacker who told The New York Post he is a high school student protesting American foreign policy. The hacker claimed he posed as a Verizon employee and tricked another employee into revealing Brennan’s personal information.
Brennan was seeking a security clearance while applying for a job as White House counterterrorism adviser. It was not immediately clear whether any national security information was compromised in the release of the clearance application, which includes his wife’s Social Security number and the names of people Brennan worked with over a long prior career at the CIA.
A CIA statement called the postings a “crime.”
“The Brennan family is the victim,” the agency said in an unattributed statement, in keeping with agency policy. “This attack is something that could happen to anyone and should be condemned, not promoted. There is no indication that any the documents released thus far are classified. In fact, they appear to be documents that a private citizen with national security interests and expertise would be expected to possess.”
The documents all date from before 2009, when Brennan joined the White House staff; before that, he was working in the private sector. Aside from the partially completed clearance application, none of the documents appears to be sensitive.
The documents include a partially written position paper on the future of intelligence, a memo on Iran, a paper from a Republican lawmaker on CIA interrogations and a summary of a contract dispute between the CIA and Brennan’s private company, the Analysis Corporation, which had filed a formal protest after losing a contract dealing with terrorist watch lists. Ken Dilanian and Stephen Braun, Washington AP