FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that WikiLeaks is an “intelligence porn” website masquerading as a news outlet.
“To my mind, it crosses a line when it moves from being about trying to educate a public and, instead, just becomes about intelligence porn, frankly,” Comey said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Comey reiterated the intelligence community’s view that WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange, works with the Russian government. During the campaign, the website published emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Assange has denied coordinating with the Russian government. He has repeatedly insisted that WikiLeaks is a news outlet that is protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment.
But Comey differentiated between the site and what he considers a legitimate news outlet. He said WikiLeaks’ activities involve “just pushing out information about sources and methods without regard to interest, without regard to the First Amendment values that normally underlie press reporting.”
He said WikiLeaks “simply becomes a conduit for the Russians or other adversary of the United States to push out information to damage the United States.”
“I realize reasonable people struggle to draw a line, but there is contact so far to the side of the line, that nothing even smells journalist about some of this conduct.”
Comey was also asked about the FBI’s involvement in investigating WikiLeaks and Assange, who is living under asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
Last month it was reported that Justice Department lawyers plan to file charges against Assange for publishing classified information stolen from the CIA.
“WikiLeaks is an important focus of our attention,” was all Comey would say about the FBI’s probe.
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