The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks began publishing on Monday more than five million emails from a U.S.-based global security analysis company that has been likened to a shadow CIA.
The emails, snatched by hackers, could unmask sensitive sources and throw light on the murky world of intelligence-gathering by the company known as Stratfor, which counts Fortune 500 companies among its subscribers.
The small selection so far published on WikiLeaks' website gives a look at the daily routine of the Texas-based think tank, whose clients range from local universities to global megacorporations. One described a $6,000-a-month payment made to a Middle Eastern source, another carried bits of gossip dropped by a retired spy, and many were filled with off-color office banter.
An initial examination of the emails turned up a mix of the innocuous and the embarrassing, but WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange promised more explosive material in the coming weeks.
In a statement shortly after midnight ET, Stratfor said the release of its stolen emails was an attempt to silence and intimidate it.
"The release of these emails is a direct attack on Stratfor," the statement said. "This is another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject."
It said it would not be cowed under the leadership of George Friedman, Stratfor's founder and chief executive officer. It said Friedman had not resigned as CEO, contrary to a bogus email circulating on the Internet.
'We will not be victimized twice'
Some of the emails being published "may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic," the company statement said.
"We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them," the statement said.
WikiLeaks did not say how it had acquired access to the vast haul of internal and external correspondence of the Austin, Texas company, formally known as Strategic Forecasting Inc.
Hackers linked to the loosely organized Anonymous hackers group said at the beginning of the year they had stolen the email correspondence of some 100 of the firm's employees. The group said it planned to publish the data so the public would know the "truth" about Stratfor operations.
Stratfor describes itself as a subscription-based publisher of geopolitical analysis with an intelligence-based approach to gathering information.
WikiLeaks and Anonymous maintain the emails will expose dark secrets about the company. Stratfor said in its statement it had worked hard to build "good sources" in many countries, "as any publisher of global geopolitical analysis would do."
In December, hackers broke into Stratfor's data systems and stole a large number of company emails.
"What we have discovered is a company that is a private intelligence Enron," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told journalists at London's Frontline Club, a reference to the Texas energy giant whose spectacular bankruptcy turned it into a byword for corporate malfeasance.
Assange accused Stratfor of running a network of paid informants, monitoring activist groups on behalf of major multinationals and making investments based on its secret intelligence.
Friedman, the chief executive, said on Jan. 11 the thieves would be hard pressed to find anything significant in the stolen emails.
"God knows what a hundred employees writing endless emails might say that is embarrassing, stupid or subject to misinterpretation. ... As they search our emails for signs of a vast conspiracy, they will be disappointed."
People linked to Anonymous took credit for the data theft. "Congrats on the amazing partnership between #Anonymous and #WikiLeaks to make all 5 million mails public," AnonSec Tweeted. AnonSec is one of several Twitter accounts used to promote and organize activities associated with Anonymous.
How WikiLeaks got the company's emails remains unclear. Assange refused to answer questions about the matter Monday, but Stratfor said the messages appeared to be the same ones stolen by hackers in December. That breach, claimed by the Internet activist group Anonymous, ravaged the company's servers and led to the disclosure of thousands of credit card numbers and other information.
Wired magazine quoted an unnamed member of Anonymous as saying that the stolen data had been transferred to WikiLeaks, which allegedly acknowledged receiving the transfer using a coded message on Twitter. Anonymous appeared to confirm that account, pointing to the cryptic message "rats for donavon," which WikiLeaks posted on Dec. 30.
It was not immediately clear what impact the release of the emails might have on Stratfor, its employees, clients and information sources. The company counts investment firms, academic institutions and major multinationals among its clients, and one academic said that the disclosure would likely scare away corporate clients.
"When people discover, 'Hey, here's your clients,' then your clients are chilled," said Jeffrey Addicott, the director for the Center of Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. "It causes a certain uproar."
Some clients are already facing questions. Among the emails are reports apparently compiled for The Dow Chemical Co. on activists who have targeted the company over its links to the Bhopal gas leak disaster, which killed thousands of Indians and spawned a long-running legal battle.
Dow said in a written statement that "major companies are often required to take appropriate action to protect their people and safeguard their facilities," adding that it operated within the law.
The reports prepared for Dow appeared to be little more than roundups of news stories and Internet chatter, but Stratfor also boasts of more serious sources.
One leaked email quotes Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton bragging about his "trusted former CIA cronies." In another, he promises to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation.
Messages left for Burton weren't immediately returned. Stratfor has speculated that some of the leaked emails may have been altered or forged, although the firm did not provide any evidence of tampering. Anonymous said in a Twitter message that the suggestion of forgery was "pathetic."
Another Stratfor email warned about letting people know too much about how the company operated.
"I think showing too much of our inner workings devalues our Mystique," the email said. "People don't know how we collect our intelligence and that's one of the cool, mysterious things about STRATFOR."
Previous releases from WikiLeaks, such as secret video battle footage and thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2010 have angered the U.S. government. WikiLeaks' disclosures also have raised questions about the safety of confidential sources quoted in previously secret documents.
Media partners
WikiLeaks said it was working with two dozen media organizations worldwide that have access to a database of the Stratfor emails. These include the U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. So far, however, only a small selection of the Stratfor emails appear to have been published to WikiLeaks' website.
"We have begun reviewing the emails and will publish as warranted," McClatchy's Washington bureau chief, James Asher, told Reuters.
WikiLeaks said its other media partners include L'Espresso and La Repubblica newspapers in Italy, the NDR/ARD state broadcaster in Germany and Russia Reporter.
The group gave a sneak preview of the emails to The Yes Men, an activist group that targets what it views as corporate greed.
The Stratfor emails discuss an elaborate hoax the group staged to criticize Dow Chemical Co's handling of the Bhopal chemical disaster in India, according to Andy Bichlbaum, one of The Yes Men.
"What is significant is the picture it helps to paint of the way corporations operate," Bichlbaum told Reuters. "They operate with complete disregard for rule of law and human decency."
After Stratfor's computers were hacked at least twice last December, the credit card details of more than 30,000 subscribers to Stratfor publications were posted on the Internet, including those of former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former U.S. vice president Dan Quayle.
The FBI began investigating the matter in December.
Australian-born Assange, 40, is currently under house arrest in Britain and fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes.
