A breach of the National Security Agency's spy technology is even worse than the leaks disclosed by Edward Snowden back in 2013 because the actual tools used to collect intelligence on the United States' adversaries are being used to launch attacks on American companies and the government itself, former CIA acting director Michael Morell said Monday.
"The only thing we know so far are the tools that have been posted on the internet for sale," Morell, now a national security contributor for CBS News, told the "CBS This Morning" program.
"We don't know what else [they] may have, and most important, we don't know how this information got out of the National Security Agency, and that's 15 months after the first leak occurred."
Since there is little known about how the technology was stolen, he added, "we don't know if they're stealing information as we sit here right now...essentially, the technology we developed at Fort Meade is being used to hack into our governments and companies and some of our personal information."
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that a mysterious group, calling itself the Shadow Brokers, had obtained the United States' hacking tools and has been disclosing the technology since August 2016.
"These leaks have been incredibly damaging to our intelligence and cyber capabilities," Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency," told The Times.
"The fundamental purpose of intelligence is to be able to effectively penetrate our adversaries in order to gather vital intelligence. By its very nature, that only works if secrecy is maintained and our codes are protected."
Morell said there are some people blaming Russia for the intrusion, but he's not sure that's what happened.
"If Russia had access to NSA in terms of cyber internet access or in terms of an insider, why would they go public and give that up?" said Panetta. "I tend to think this is a disgruntled insider or outside group."
Morell Monday also discussed President Donald Trump's statement on Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials about interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump commented when Putin says that Russia was not involved, he believes him "when he tells me that he means it."
"I'm not sure it's treasonous," Morell said of Trump's comments, "but it certainly shows that the president is gullible to being manipulated by Vladimir Putin."
Trump came under fire for the Putin comments, followed by his calling three key U.S. intelligence veterans "political hacks."
"I think the key issue here with regard to the president and our intelligence community is that he seems to think that it's a political entity, a political tool, and that scares me because the last president who saw our intelligence community that way was Richard Nixon, who then used the FBI and the CIA inappropriately," said Morell.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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