CIA director says 'worship of Snowden" fuels rise in leaks

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Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Mike Pompeo said the growing trend of leaks by state or non-state actors was triggered partially by the "worship" of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden.

In an interview on MSNBC, the official said “there is a phenomenon, the worship of Edward Snowden, and those who steal American secrets for the purpose of self-aggrandizement or money or for whatever their motivation may be, does seem to be on the increase."

Snowden is a former CIA employee who in 2013 revealed Washington DC's global spying activities and the surveillance of ordinary citizens by the National Security Agency by leaking documents to media outlets.

Screen grab of Edward Snowden's Twitter account

Snowden responded on Twitter saying he didn't feel any worship.

"It's no surprise CIA is baffled to find the public respects those who reveal official crimes more than those who commit them," he said.

Explaining why deterrence operations are so tough, Pompeo said "you now have not only nation states trying to steal our stuff, but non-state, hostile intelligence services, well-funded –folks like WikiLeaks, out there trying to steal American secrets for the sole purpose of undermining the United States and democracy."

Serving as a platform where secret information can be published by anonymous sources, WikiLeaks released documents showing how CIA accesses computers in March and previously published information embarrassing the US military with hundreds of thousands of logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks supporters rally in Washington DC in 2013 after a massive documents dump./VCG photo

During the 2016 US presidential election, WikiLeaks published Democratic Party emails. The CIA believes the documents were stolen by Russia in an effort to help the Trump campaign.

The CIA director said the administration is focused on stopping leaks and pursuing perpetrators.

"I think we'll have some successes both on the deterrence side – that is stopping them from happening – as well as on punishing those who we catch who have done it," he said.

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