Controversial government watchdog Wikileaks released the CIA Director John Brennan’s personal emails days after his account was hacked.
ANNOUNCE: We have obtained the contents of CIA Chief John Brennan's email account and will be releasing it shortly.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2015
The FBI launched an investigation into claims the alleged teen hacker made to the New York Post that he was acting on behalf of Palestine, and successfully breached Brennan’s and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s email accounts, the New York Times reported. Johnson, however, didn’t actively use the compromised Comcast email account. The hacker also claimed to uncover documents pertaining to Brennan’s security clearance.
So far the content from Brennan’s AOL account hasn’t been salacious but may have compromised security, namely an event guest list with some employees names and social security numbers for building access — with no indication classified information was sent to or from the account.
According to documents obtained by WikiLeaks and that could not be independently verified by ThinkProgress, Brennan had draft form used when applying for a national security position, a fax correspondence with the Government Accountability Office’s general counsel that points to tension between the government and Brennan’s private intelligence contracting company, and recommendation papers on Iran’s terrorism threat and the leaking of classified information dating back to 2008. The FBI hasn’t confirmed the breach.
The hack pales in comparison to recent government hacks, including the Office of Personnel Management’s breach of background check information for more than 21 million government personnel, and and email scandals such as that of former CIA director and Brennan’s predecessor retired Gen. David Patraeus, who was forced to resign for leaking classified material to his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell.
Moreover, while Brennan’s email scandal proves embarrassing — particularly regarding the potential leaking of the names and social security numbers of intelligence agents and other government officials that could have been exposed in AOL’s breach last year — it hasn’t garnered the same political attention as that surrounding Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s private email server. (Clinton’s server was against protocol, wasn’t breached, but did contain classified material, which doesn’t automatically constitute a security risk.)
So far, it seems that Brennan’s breach is more akin to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s email gaffe earlier this year, when he accidentally published hundreds of thousands of emails with his constituents’ email addresses, social security numbers, home addresses, and phone numbers.