WikiLeaks today began publishing more than five million confidential emails from US-based intelligence firm Stratfor, the anti-secrecy group said.
The messages, which date from between July 2004 and December 2011, will reveal Stratfor’s “web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods,” claimed a WikiLeaks press release.
“The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients,” added the press release.
The online organisation claims to have proof of the firm’s confidential links to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co and Lockheed Martin and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
WikiLeaks founder, Mr Julian Assange, is currently in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning on rape and sexual assault allegations, and WikiLeaks has long expressed concern that if he is sent to Sweden, Stockholm would quickly send him on to the United States.
Washington is eager to lay hands on the founder after the organisation’s publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic files.
WikiLeaks promises that the latest leak will highlight Stratfor’s attempts to “subvert” the Web site and expose the US’s attempts to “attack” Assange.
Stratfor, which was founded by George Friedman in 1996, describes itself as “a subscription-based provider of geopolitical analysis.”
“Unlike traditional news outlets, Stratfor uses a unique, intelligence-based approach to gathering information via rigorous open-source monitoring and a global network of human sources,” according to the Texas-based firm’s Web site.