Wikileaks Partners With Anonymous, Releases Security Firm’s Emails
Even with founder Julian Assange under house arrest in Britain, WikiLeaks’s engines are set to “full steam ahead.” And the whistleblowing organization has a new partner: Anonymous.
WikiLeaks’s new and apparently effective relationship with Anonymous, the international group of hackers and “hacktivists,” was announced with the posting of more than 5 million classified emails on Monday. The documents were allegedly obtained by Anonymous from Stratfor, a global security firm based in Texas.
The emails date from June 2004 to December 2011 and have been dubbed the “Global Intelligence Files.” According to WikiLeaks, the emails give a look at the “inner workings” of Stratfor, which serves as a sort of intelligence network for private corporations.
The emails detail the company’s role as intelligence provider to major corporations, including Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and various U.S. government agencies. The emails purportedly show that Stratfor pays global “government and diplomatic sources” for advance knowledge of world events, and that Stratfor “cultivates close ties” with U.S. government agencies by working with and hiring former employees of said agencies.
Assange, still editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, commented on the leak in a press conference Monday morning.
“One thing that has saved the world is that incompetence prevails in the dark,” said Assange, who is appealing extradition from Britain to Sweden in order to stand trial for accusations of sexual misconduct.
One batch of emails details how Stratfor carefully watched the “Yes Men,” a group of activists, on behalf of Dow Chemical. The Yes Men want Dow held responsible for a 1984 environmental disaster in India, which killed thousands of people and injured many more.
Four thousand of the intercepted emails were relevant to the “U.S. attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks” and Stratfor’s mission to “subvert” the organization. Those conversations also indicate that Stratfor was interested in tapping into the “‘leak-focused’ gravy train” after WikiLeaks released classified information about the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
WikiLeaks will be working with media organizations throughout the world to dissect and share information in the massive email collection, as it has done with prior dumps. In the U.S., WikiLeaks has partnered with McClatchy and Rolling Stone instead of The New York Times and The Washington Post, with which the organization has previously worked.
In a press release, Stratfor said it was “not affiliated with any government,” that the emails are “private property” and were taken by “thieves.” Stratfor also said it would decline any questioning on the release.
The dump was announced on WikiLeaks’ official Twitter feed, prefaced by teaser messages about “extraordinary news” and a countdown to the press release.
Everyone should follow the WikiLeaks twitter feed closely. Extraordinary news sometime in the next 96 hours.
WikiLeaks and Anonymous, despite having somewhat compatible goals, have never worked together with such transparency. WikiLeaks’ press release did not directly reference Anonymous, but Anon-related Twitter accounts claimed responsibility for getting the Stratfor emails and sending them to WikiLeaks.
Why’d #Anonymous give the Stratfor #GIFiles to WikiLeaks? Transparency, whether forced or voluntary, is necessary to understanding our world
Anonymous doesn’t appear to be calling it a day, either. Soon after the Stratfor dump, an Anon twitter account said to be on the lookout for “something huge.”
What a day. First WikiLeaks begins publishing 5.5 million emails from Stratfor. Up next? #Anonymous announces the start of something huge.
WikiLeaks’s press conference on the Global Intelligence Files can be viewed below:
And here he is excoriating Laurelai, an HQ member who had created a set of instructions for how to carry out an Anonymous attack. Sabu derided it as a stupid move that would help federal investigators make a conspiracy case if leaked and generally make Anonymous look as devious as HBGary. In the same breath that he insists Anonymous is disorganized and leaderless, Sabu plays the role of a leader, enforcing unit discipline while the other members stand by. Laurelei fights back by criticizing Sabu for quickly going public with the HBGary hack, rather than secretly listening in on their e-mails for weeks, and Sabu responds by openly admitting to his involvement: “I’m the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours.”
Several writers have published their thoughts on the bank employee emails posted by Anonymous. They appear to have been caught up in the news cycle, hoping to get ahead of this story and get the most traffic to their post. In rushing the story, at least a few have committed a basic failure of journalism, one that could easily be remedied by fact checking.
Karl Rove is intimately involved with powerful Swedish interests who have a stake in obtaining favors from the US elite and government. This involvement includes Rove patrons/proteges such as the Bush family and Donald Rumsfeld and crosses lines between politics, business, finance, arms manufacturing and dealing, and lastly but not least, media penetration and influence.
The Swedish elite stands to gain much from pleasing the US interests who stand to lose the most from what Assange’s Wikileaks project has done, namely, expose them as liars (…not that the common person does not already know that powerful interests are lying to them). Handing Assange over to the US would be a big favor and much appreciated by those in the US seeking his head. This gives the “motive” to the circumstances here. 
Specifically, there is a long criminal record of fraud and bribery committed by Swiss mega-conglomerate ABB which could be an impediment to pending deals and acquisitions that the owners of ABB (principally the powerful Wallenberg family) would like to see consummated. Actually, as with all thnigs Corporate, there is a bit of entanglement to describe to avoid being caught appearing uninformed here: “ABB is headquartered in Switzerland, but Swedish owned by Investor AB. The Wallenberg family has controlling interest (shares) of Investor AB and the 120 companies, including SAAB AB (group).” 
