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Wikileaks publishes documents from CIA director John Brennan’s personal email account

Wikileaks publishes documents from CIA director John Brennan’s personal email account

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Wikileaks has published data from CIA director John Brennan's private email account, in a release the group is calling The CIA Files. The documents include a form provided for background investigation during Brennan's confirmation, as well as position papers on Iran and the intelligence community at large.

The documents originate in a hack of Brennan's personal email account at AOL, announced earlier this week. Much of the data has been previewed on the attacker's twitter account @_CWA_, which has since been suspended. According to an interview with the New York Post, the hacker obtained Brennan's email archive through a social engineering attack on Verizon, which provided the necessary information to reset Brennan's AOL password. The larger email archive includes numerous messages between Brennan and other government officials, although it's unclear if any of the messages were officially classified. Still, much of it is clearly sensitive, and early releases have included social security numbers for a number of high-ranking government officials.

Finding a host for much of the email data has proved more difficult than usual. The web figure ChthuluSec, who has hosted leak archives in the past, announced he had received the archive earlier this week, but held off publishing the archive over concerns he might be extradited to face trial in the US. The CIA announced it had referred the breach to US law enforcement, although it's unclear what legal recourse the agency might take.

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