Steve King: US is ‘too easy’ on leakers

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) says the federal government is too lenient on those leaking its internal secrets to the public.

“The leaks seem to be replete throughout our government,” King told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Thursday, citing WikiLeaks’ release of a large trove of documents concerning the CIA earlier this week as an example.

“We’ve got noble people, patriots, serving at each of our agencies. But the problem we have is some of them inside are allowing the leaks and sometimes it may be we’re a little too easy on [them].”

{mosads}

King added that WikiLeaks’ recent dump of alleged CIA information is “a very, very heavy thing laying in front of us right now.”

“[It’s] without much reaction from our executive branch or the government in its entirety,” said King, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

“We know that Julian Assange has delivered a lot of information out there that has turned out to be accurate,” he added of the WikiLeaks founder. “It looks to me that we’ve got to go back and retool our cyber approach to this because of the leaks that are coming out.”

WikiLeaks on Tuesday published a massive trove of documents purportedly revealing specifics of the CIA’s hacking programs.

The documents contain descriptions of hacking tools, engineering notes, internal communications and the redacted names of agents, among other items.

The CIA and FBI are reportedly collaborating on a joint probe of the incident, focusing on how WikiLeaks obtained the documents and whether they were leaked by an employer or contractor.

The CIA insisted Wednesday that it had never acted illegally, unconstitutionally or unethically with its hacking initiatives while declining to comment on the authenticity of the WikiLeaks cache.

“The American public should be deeply troubled by any WikiLeaks disclosure designed to damage the Intelligence Community’s ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries,” it said in a statement. “Such disclosures not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm.”

Assange on Thursday derided the CIA for letting its files get hacked, accusing the agency of a “historic act of devastating incompetence.”