Calling himself an ‘innocent man,’ a former CIA employee accused of stealing classified national defense information and possessing child pornography said in a letter to a judge the US government had used falsehoods to put him behind bars.
‘It’s only a matter of time but rest assured, I will prove my innocence,’ Joshua Adam Schulte said in the 137-page handwritten bail letter he submitted to a New York judge on Thursday.
Schulte, 29, alternated in his repetitive and rambling letter between despair and determination to prove he’s wrongly accused in an embarrassing and damaging episode for the CIA that is known as the ‘Vault 7’ leak.
He said his specialty at the CIA was data hiding and cryptography and claimed he was among the top specialists in the world.
Joshua Schulte, a former CIA engineer who was charged with possession of child pornography and leaking thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, has written a 137-page letter to a judge claiming he is innocent
He said he had worked on ‘the most sensitive operations’ including special projects touching countries including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Denmark and Turkey.
Schulte claimed he helped verify the location of Osama bin Laden before his 2011 killing and helped ‘capture and kill terrorists, and even prevent terrorist attacks from right here in New York City.’
‘I see the freedom and democracy I thought I was defending never actually existed – the Great American Façade,’ he wrote.
His letter also claimed he had lost 35lbs during his time before bars, and that he’d not been able to see a significant portion of the evidence prosecutors had against him, The New York Post reported.
Schulte signed his name beneath the words: ‘Innocent Indefinitely Incarcerated Inmate #79471-054.’ The letter was publicly filed for several minutes before it was taken out of the public court file.
US District Judge Paul A. Crotty instructed prosecutors to respond within a week at the hearing on Thursday.
The judge noted the length of the bail argument and the fact that it included a 100-page appendix before Schulte told him he wanted to show him new information.
He said he was improperly detained last August pending trial and wanted to attack the presumption that he is a danger to the community.
The former CIA worker, 29, said he was an ‘American patriot’ and would prove his innocence, but had not been given access to much of the evidence against him. He also asked for bail while he awaited trial
The leak, published on WikiLeaks under the name ‘Vault 7’ contains information on how the CIA collects information from electronic devices such as phones and televisions
Schulte’s letter, which he said was handwritten due to a broken typewriter, did not appear to impress Crotty, who remarked on its length.
‘I’m not sure when I’ll get finished,’ he told Schulte, adding: ‘But I’ll start reading.’
Prosecutors declined comment through a spokeswoman after the submission was made public.
Schulte was charged last week with the theft of classified materials that were released by WikiLeaks in March 2017.
In his court filing, Schulte said at least 20 people had access to the information leaked by WikiLeaks, but investigators thought only three could have accessed the data.
‘It should be clear that the FBI rushed, with reckless disregard for the truth, to meet an arbitrary, artificial, and unrealistic deadline one week after Vault 7 was posted,’ he wrote.
He also said he would easily prove that he did not know about and could not access child porn found on his computer, which he blamed on a business he ran that provided storage space for his clients’ private data.
‘This is the story of a botched investigation and the search for a scapegoat to conceal government incompetence,’ he said.
‘Alas, there is no child pornography case. There is no national security case. There is just an innocent man who served his country and was wrongfully punished for reporting issues to his management.’
According to an indictment, Schulte stole the information in 2016 in the Eastern District of Virginia. At Thursday’s hearing, he agreed to be tried in New York.
US District Judge Paul A. Crotty (pictured) did not appear impressed by the massive document, but said he would read it