WikiLeaks to Reveal E-Mails from Inside Private 'Shadow CIA'

Global anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks announced Sunday night it would be releasing more than 5 million e-mails hacked from the servers of a private intelligence newsletter publisher, which Wikileaks notes provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies.

According to a statement on the WikiLeaks site, the group will begin Monday publishing e-mails sent by employees of Texas-based Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting) Global Intelligence, a private intelligence-gathering company that has been labeled as a shadow CIA in a profile by Barron's magazine. WikiLeaks said the e-mails would expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States and show how companies like Stratfor target individuals for their corporate and government clients.

According to the WikiLeaks release, the e-mails would also show how Stratford skirted U.S. laws prohibiting cash bribes to foreign governments and partnered with a Goldman Sachs managing director to set up a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The e-mails, it says, will show corrupt dealings between Stratfor and various international media organizations, as well as how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants

[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase, Stratfor CEO George Friedman wrote to an analyst about how to extract information from an Israeli intelligence source, according to WikiLeaks, which included the segment from a December 2011 e-mail illustrate the point.

Stratfor, which bills itself a subscription-based provider of geopolitical analysis that gathers information via rigorous open-source monitoring and a global network of human sources, had noted in December of last year that its servers had been hacked. Credit-card information from many of its subscribers was later released publicly.

On Jan. 11, Friedman released a public message predicting e-mails would eventually be released.

God knows what a hundred employees writing endless e-mails might say that is embarrassing, stupid or subject to misinterpretation, Friedman said in the video, but noted, As they search our emails for signs of a vast conspiracy, they will be disappointed.

We are what we said we are: a publishing organization focused on geopolitics, he added.