Lubbock Native Suspected to Be Part of the Largest Loss of Classified Documents in CIA History

I was recently shocked to learn that a former classmate of mine from Lubbock is currently serving time in federal prison for his alleged involvement in the notorious WikiLeaks case of 2017 referred to by The New York Times as "the largest loss of classified documents in the agency's history and a huge embarrassment for C.I.A. officials."

Thirty-two-year-old Joshua Adam Schulte has spent several years sitting in The Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, accused of stealing and exposing classified CIA information to the WikiLeaks Vault 7, a page specifically created to reveal CIA hacking tools. In 2020, he's facing 7 charges related to the leak.

Most of us that knew Josh in high school are still in disbelief that he ever even made it to work for the CIA. It's not that he wasn't smart, but he wasn't someone that stood out as being a super-brain or anything. We worked on projects together for classes. He had crappy handwriting and did things last minute like every other 7th grade boy.

Upon Schulte's arrest, thousands of images of child pornography were also discovered on a server he created for a business while studying at the University of Texas back in 2010. It's unclear if the images actually belonged to him as tons of people had access to the server. While I have some doubts about Josh's involvement with child pornography, there are others that believe he's guilty.

In reading through pages of court documents pertaining to the child pornography discovered on his electronics, Assistant US Attorney Matthew Laroche made the case for Josh's illegal content with a glaring statement that I found difficult to read:

The defendant stored this child pornography beneath three layers of encryption. And beneath those layers, he neatly organized it into different folders, according to his preferences, and stored it for a  period of years. This is not a defendant who simply downloaded and then deleted the child pornography.  The defendant also communicated regularly with others about the sharing and about the downloading and distribution of child pornography, even at times bragging about how he could download it and even bragging about different images that he was presenting to other individuals. And, finally, the defendant also had a document that he maintained in his encrypted containers that had a list of locations where he could essentially illicitly and illegally download these images on websites.

When asked about the private server in court, Schulte claims he told users, “Just don’t put anything too illegal on there.”

There was a mistrial in a jury case this past March that found him guilty of lying to the FBI and contempt, but were unable to reach a verdict on eight other charges. A retrial date for Schulte's alleged involvement in the CIA leak was set for June 2021.