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WikiLeaks leaks CIA director's private emails – including his nat sec clearance dossier

Letters, memos, personal info, all dumped online

Days after a teenage stoner hacked the AOL email account of CIA director John Brennan, WikiLeaks has published highly sensitive files from the spymaster's inbox.

The documents include Brennan's application for national security clearance, with address, phone number, passport details, and the names and addresses of associates including former CIA boss George Tenet. None of the information has been redacted, which poses a major headache for the director and his agency.

Also included in the trove are two attachments regarding the use of torture during the interrogation of suspects by the CIA. They relate to the 2008 Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act, which was pushed for by Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), who infamously compared waterboarding to swimming.

The Iranian government will be very interested in one of the emails, which contains a draft of Brennan's 2008 assessment of the country, titled "The Conundrum of Iran." In it the director lambastes the Bush administration for refusing to engage with Iran to counter terrorism, points out that a central reason for animus between the countries is the 1953 CIA ousting of its democratically elected leader, and suggests opening diplomatic channels with the theocracy.

Brennan also wrote a position paper on the future of the intelligence community in the US, which WikiLeaks has now leaked. He suggests making the top jobs in the CIA and DHS ten-year fixed terms (to remove politics from the selection process) and the need for structure in the intelligence community.

The final document will be of interest to anyone trying to scoop lucrative contracts from the US security services. The document details a disagreement with military contractor The Analysis Group (TAG) over a contract for software services in which the contractor was protesting at the terms of the contract.

WikiLeaks has promised more emails are to come, presumably meaning the high-school hacker has sent the whistleblowing website all 40 documents that were apparently in Brennan's account. There's no word on whether the kid also sent over the data he purloined from the Comcast account of the US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

With two such high-profile scalps under his belt, it's got to be a nervous time for the anonymous teen stoner, and he's presumably calming himself down with a blunt or three. His Twitter account is still active... ®

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