CIA director labels WikiLeaks a ‘hostile intelligence service’ 
 
 CIA Director Mike Pompeo launched a broadside Thursday against the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, calling it a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted” by hostile countries like Russia. 
 
 "WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service, and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” Pompeo said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in his first public remarks since becoming CIA chief. 
 
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 Pompeo also pointed to U.S. intelligence officials’ conclusion that WikiLeaks had served as a middleman for Russian intelligence services when it published thousands of pilfered Democratic Party emails during the heart of the presidential contest. He didn’t mention that the same assessment determined that Russia’s efforts evolved into an influence campaign aimed at helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. 
 
 “In January of this year, our intelligence community determined that Russian military intelligence — the GRU — had used WikiLeaks to release data of U.S. victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee,” the former Kansas Republican congressman said Thursday. 
 
 WikiLeaks quickly jabbed back on Twitter, noting that Pompeo had used his congressional Twitter account last summer to link to a conservative blog post praising the group’s release of hacked DNC emails. That account has since been deleted. 
 
 In his remarks Thursday, Pompeo said he and his CIA colleagues find the celebration of WikiLeaks in some quarters "to be both perplexing and deeply troubling.” He also took pokes at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others who have leaked sensitive information, including former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and the imprisoned Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning. 
 
 Assange and “his ilk make common cause with dictators today,” Pompeo said. “Yes, they try unsuccessfully to cloak themselves and their actions in the language of liberty and privacy; in reality, however, they champion nothing but their own celebrity. Their currency is clickbait; their moral compass, nonexistent." 
 
 "I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history," Pompeo said. 
 
 Pompeo’s seeming change of heart on WikiLeaks is similar to the one shown by Trump, who praised the group in October when its releases were undermining Clinton’s campaign. 
 
 “I’ll tell you, this WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,” Trump said at the time. At another campaign stop he added: “We love WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. They have revealed a lot.” 
 
 Pompeo leveled his harshest critique Thursday at Assange, whom he called “a narcissist who has created nothing of value. He relies on the dirty work of others to make himself famous. He is a fraud — a coward hiding behind a screen. 
 
 “And in Kansas, we know something about false wizards,” he said. 
 
 Pompeo added that as a result of Snowden’s revelations about widespread NSA eavesdropping "it became harder to monitor the communications of terrorist organizations that are bent on bringing bloodshed to our shores. Snowden’s disclosures helped these groups find ways to hide themselves in the crowded digital forest." 
 
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 He said the U.S. government has “not done nearly enough” to take down non-state actors, but that “I'm confident this administration will pursue them with great vigor.” 
 
 WikiLeaks hasn’t let up in sparring with U.S. intelligence agencies since Trump took office — it has released large batches of files about hacking tools that it says allow the CIA to spy on people through computers, smart televisions and other electronics. Pompeo declined to address the authenticity of those tools, but experts and former intelligence officials have told POLITICO the documents appear legitimate. 
 
 Pompeo also said Thursday that his agency has a “fantastic” relationship with Trump, who had waged a highly public feud with the intelligence community last year over its conclusions on Russian election meddling. 
 
 His comment provoked laughter from the standing-room-only audience. 
 
 "No, don't laugh,” Pompeo said. “I mean that.” ||||| Image copyright AP 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump has backed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in casting doubt on intelligence alleging Russian meddling in the US election. 
 
 Mr Assange said Russia was not the source for the site's mass leak of emails from the Democratic Party. 
 
 Mr Trump has now backed that view in a tweet. He wrote: "Assange... said Russians did not give him the info!" 
 
 The president-elect has repeatedly refused to accept the conclusions of the US intelligence community. 
 
 Several US agencies including the FBI and the CIA believe Russia directed hacks against the Democratic Party and the campaign of its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. 
 
 The information, released through Wikileaks and other outlets, was intended to help Mr Trump win the election, say the FBI and CIA. 
 
 On Tuesday evening, Mr Trump said an intelligence briefing he was due to receive on the issue had been delayed. 
 
 "Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!" he wrote. 
 
 But US intelligence officials insisted there had been no delay in the briefing schedule. 
 
 In an interview with Fox News, Mr Assange repeated his claim that Russia was not behind the leak. 
 
 He also said a 14-year-old could have carried out one of the hacks, on the email account of John Podesta, a top aide of Mrs Clinton. 
 
 In 2010, several leading Republican figures were calling for the Wikileaks founder to be imprisoned after his website published thousands of embarrassing diplomatic cables leaked by former Army Pte Chelsea Manning. 
 
 Mr Trump tweeted twice on Wednesday morning in support of what Mr Assange said on Fox News. 
 
 Image copyright Twitter 
 
 Image copyright Twitter 
 
 However, Mr Trump has previously been critical of the Wikileaks organisation. 
 
 When asked by a Fox News reporter in 2010 to comment on leaks, he responded: "I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something." 
 
 In another development, Mr Trump's pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has agreed he will cut all ties with Exxon Mobil and comply with conflict-of-interest requirements. He departs with a $180m retirement package. 
 
 Ethics row 
 
 Meanwhile, Republicans have ditched a plan to gut the independent body that investigates political misconduct after a backlash. 
 
 The lawmakers' surprise vote to strip the Office of Congressional Ethics of its independence prompted public uproar and a dressing down from Mr Trump on Twitter. 
 
 The secretive move, which overshadowed the first day of the 115th Congress, was reversed in an emergency meeting. 
 
 The ethics body was set up in 2008 following a slew of scandals that resulted in several House lawmakers being jailed. 
 
 Mr Trump made cleaning up corruption in Washington a key theme of his campaign. 
 
 Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had argued unsuccessfully against the rule change, which was adopted on Monday night in a closed-door meeting. 
 
 As the news spread, internet searches for "who is my representative" rocketed, according to Google Trends, and constituents tried to call and email lawmakers to object. 
 
 House Republicans called an emergency meeting and abruptly voted to undo the change. ||||| WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that a teenager could have hacked into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's computer and retrieved damaging email messages that the website published during last year's election campaign. 
 
 "We published several ... emails which show Podesta responding to a phishing email," Assange said during the first part of the interview, which aired on "Hannity" Tuesday night. "Podesta gave out that his password was the word ‘password’. His own staff said this email that you’ve received, this is totally legitimate. So, this is something ... a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta that way." 
 
 Assange also claimed that Clinton herself made "almost no attempt" to keep her private emails safe from potentially hostile states during her tenure as secretary of state. 
 
 TRUMP RESPONDS TO SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA, SAYS IT'S TIME TO 'MOVE ON' 
 
 "Now, was she trying to keep them secure from Republicans? Probably," Assange said. "But in terms of [nation-] states, almost no attempt." 
 
 Hannity interviewed Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The Australia native has been holed up there for five years battling extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which Assange denies. 
 
 WikiLeaks published more than 50,000 emails detailing dubious practices at the Clinton Foundation, top journalists working closely with the Clinton campaign, key Clinton aides speaking derisively of Catholics and a top Democratic National Committee (DNC) official providing debate questions to Clinton in advance. 
 
 Assange has repeatedly denied claims by the Obama administration that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that exposed the DNC and Podesta emails. Assange also has repeatedly insisted that WikiLeaks' source for the emails was not the Russian government or any "state party," and said the outgoing administration was attempting to "delegitimize" President-Elect Donald Trump by making those claims. 
 
 In the first part of the interview, Assange criticized a Dec. 29 joint analysis of the cyberattacks by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. After the report was released, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds. 
 
 US GIVES DETAILED LOOK AT RUSSIA'S ALLEGED ELECTION HACKING 
 
 "On the top [of the report], there is a disclaimer, saying … there is no guarantee that any of this information is accurate," Assange told Hannity. "There’s nothing in that report that says that any information was given to us. Nothing." 
 
 Assange also criticized the mainstream media for what he called the "ethical corruption" displayed in the Podesta emails. 
 
 "The editor of the New York Times ... has come out and said that he would do the same thing as WikiLeaks, [that] if they had obtained that information, they would have published it," Assange said. "Now, unfortunately, I don’t believe that is true." 
 
 Assange added that he doubted that partisan sympathy explained the cozy relationship between Podesta and reporters covering the Clinton campaign. 
 
 "It’s more like, ‘You rub my back, I’ll rub yours. I’ll give you information, you’ll come to my – I’ll invite you to my child’s christening or my next big party.’" 
 
 Assange said that the website would not have hesitated to publish embarrassing information about Trump if they had received it. 
 
 "There’s no sources coming out through other journalists … and saying, 'We gave WikiLeaks all this information about Donald Trump or … Vladimir Putin and you know what? They didn’t publish it.' No one has come out and said that," Assange said. "If they did, that would hurt our reputation for trust for our sources." 
 
 The WikiLeaks founder also warned Democrats that criticizing the website for publishing the emails was a "stupid maneuver." 
 
 "It’s the same reason why they lost the election, which is instead of focusing on substance, they focused on other things [like] this attempt to say how outrageous it is that the American public received true information before an election," Assange said. "The public doesn’t buy that. They want as much true information as possible." ||||| "Russians did not give him the info!” President-elect Donald Trump tweets. | AP Photo Trump sides with Assange on Russia hacking 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump is seemingly taking the word of Julian Assange over that of the U.S. intelligence community, writing on Twitter that the WikiLeaks founder “said it was not the Russians who gave” him the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and other prominent political officials. 
 
 “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. That post replaced an earlier one with similar language in which Assange’s name was misspelled. 
 
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 Minutes later, Trump cited a Twitter post from Fox News in which Assange is quoted as labeling American media coverage as "very dishonest." The president-elect added his own commentary, writing that media coverage in the U.S. is "more dishonest than anyone knows." 
 
 He followed that tweet with another series that renewed criticism of both the DNC and the media. 
 
 “Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have 'hacking defense' like the RNC has and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H),” he tweeted. “A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass.” 
 
 The president-elect quoted Assange from an interview he gave to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, in which the WikiLeaks founder said that the emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other prominent political figures were not given to him by a foreign government. The interview was held inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been for five years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on charges of sexual assault. 
 
 Trump's decision to side with Assange and Russia over the intelligence community he will soon lead has irked even some in his own party. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have been clear in identifying Russia as the culprit behind the cyberattcks, as has Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who said Wednesday that he does not dispute the assessment of the intelligence community that the Kremlin is to blame. 
 
 "I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers serving around the world, very smart and experienced analysts that we have here in the nation's capital than I do in people like Julian Assange, I can tell you that much," Cotton said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." 
 
 Trump has thus far been unwilling to accept the assessment of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that it was the Russian government that was responsible for the wave of cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential election. He has instead suggested that it would be nearly impossible to know the true culprit and that “I also know things that other people don’t know” when it comes to the cyberattacks. 
 
 He and his surrogates have also suggested that concern about the cyberattacks from the intelligence community and media are actually thinly-veiled efforts to delegitimize the Trump administration before it even begins. Trump had announced plans to receive a briefing on those attacks early this week but announced Tuesday night that that briefing had been postponed until Friday. He wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night that “The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” 
 
 Authors:
– "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it is—a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," CIA chief Mike Pompeo said Thursday, pulling no punches as he laid into the organization that President Trump declared his love for on the campaign trail. Julian Assange and "his ilk make common cause with dictators today," Pompeo said, per Politico, accusing the WikiLeaks founder of cloaking himself in the language of liberty and privacy while really caring only about his own celebrity. "Their currency is clickbait; their moral compass, nonexistent," Pompeo said, adding that he was confident "that had Assange been around in the 1930s and '40s and '50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history." Pompeo, a former GOP congressman from Kansas, called Assange a narcissist, a fraud, and a "coward hiding behind a screen," the Wichita Eagle reports. "And in Kansas, we know something about false wizards," he said. Pompeo strongly suggested that the Trump administration, which has apparently sharply shifted position on WikiLeaks, is about to take firm action against WikiLeaks. "It ends now," warned the CIA chief, who said his agency has a "fantastic relationship" with Trump. WikiLeaks fired back with more than a dozen tweets, including one with a screenshot of a tweet Pompeo made last summer saying that DNC emails, leaked courtesy of WikiLeaks, were proof that the election "fix was in" from "Obama on down."