Wake me when WikiLeaks publishes the Illuminati e-mails

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Monday, February 27, 2012 - 1:54 PM Share

WikiLeaks had been kind of quiet as of late, but yesterday they enigmatically tweeted that there would be "extraordinary news sometime in the next 96 hours." Soon after, they released the following announcement:

WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods....

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ’alpha’, ’tactical’ and ’secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ’Izzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ’Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............... huh? Oh, I'm sorry I must have dozed off there for a second. Man, I sure can't wait for that extraordinary news to be relea-- wait, that's it?

OK, seriously? Wikileaks thinks this is a big reveal? Seriously? I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I'm personally quite excited. The market for political consulting kinda fascinates me, and this kind of e-mail treasure trove should be a gold mine for research into how Stratfor does what it does -- provided one can separate the fake e-mails from the real thing. Furthermore, IR students the world over who are in desperate need of a thesis idea should be on these emails like fake ash on Ryan Seacrest.

On the whole, however, this ain't that big of a deal. I might be biased here because I've looked into the brain of Stratfor founder George Friedman and come away unimpressed. It could be that a lot of WikiLeaks rhetoric on this issue smacks of massive hypocrisy. It's more than a bit rich, for example, that someone like Julian Assange complains that "the private intelligence industry lacks control placed on government organizations." I hate to break it to Assange, but based on his own actions it seems like the nonprofit intelligence sector is just as unregulated.

This kind of docu-dump says more about Wikileaks and Anonymous than it does about anything else. Wikileaks thinks it's groundbreaking that Stratfor CEO George Friedman had contact with Bush administration power-broker Karl Rove in the fall of 2011. I read the e-mail exchange, and if you think that's groundbreaking, you need to read more interesting things on the interwebs.

Seriously, am I missing anything? Is there anything being revealed that's anything close to revelatory?

EXPLORE:INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, CONSPIRACY THEORIES, CONSULTING, STUPIDITY SO STRONG IT BURNS, WEB 2.0, WIKILEAKS

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GRANT

3:56 PM ET

February 27, 2012

It's the embassy cables all

It's the embassy cables all over again. I'll grant the possibility that the information might get some people fired or arrested for one thing or another but WikiLeaks seems to really want to have more of an impact on the world then it has to date.

Frankly I'd be happy if they would either stop hacking people's computers or actually devote more time to nations that could use that sort of thing (though I doubt they have many trustworthy people who can read Russian or Chinese).

CHARLESFRITH

3:56 PM ET

February 27, 2012

The people who have most to fear

Do the most mocking. Daniel. Fortunately your average CFR/Georgetown/Israel First minion are two a penny and are too stupid to know how the game works.

That doesn't mean we aren't taking notes on the warmongers.

REALREALIST

8:49 PM ET

February 27, 2012

hey chuck you fuckface jew hater...come find me!

eom

REALREALIST

11:32 PM ET

February 27, 2012

why does FP allow this hate speech? they know about it, yet.....

eom

KBC

8:01 PM ET

February 27, 2012

I had my email address with Stratfor

and I was sooo scared. Come on, what wikileaks told the world was already talked about in hush tones and it just made the job of journalists around the world a bit tougher. In the sense, there was no intrigue left in writing about something different, Pakistan army supports drones, collateral damage in Iraq,

The problem with Anonymous and wikileaks is that they are novice who think transparency means better politics. This is contrary to the very idea of politics. The only time I was excited about wikileaks was when they decided to publish Sarah palin's emails.

Ass'ange had his flash in the pan moment and now he would rue why he forgot the condom for the rest of his life. For illuminati, Dan Brown could be a better choice.

JOHNSONIAN

5:15 AM ET

February 28, 2012

Biggest story here...

...is the birth of the Anonymous - Wikileaks alliance. Content of the Stratfor emails, meh. The Oscars were more exciting, especially the part where Angelina Jolie presented (I mean, come on!!). That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first of many A-W joint hacks/file releases.

ANCHISES

11:38 PM ET

February 28, 2012

Good post

You missed the best part Dan. From the Wikileaks press release: "Stratfor claims that it operates "without ideology, agenda or national bias", yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel."

Wikileaks... being upset that someone STOLE THEIR DOCUMENTS AND GAVE THEM TO PEOPLE THEY DID NOT WANT VIEWING THEM. The hilarity is endless.

"They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations"

Wait... they front as an intelligence broker, "but" provide intelligence? I don't understand the grammatical construction here. The "but" would imply something revelatory. It's like saying "Wal-Mart, which fronts as a retail store, but actually sells products to people".

"For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical."

OMG, people monitoring information that's publicly viewable on public domains on the public internet? Gosh, next thing you know these people will be reading NEWSPAPERS!

The whole issue of "bribes" and informants is laughable. Foreign journalists "grease the wheels" to get access to good local info all the time, especially in trouble areas.

George Friedman is kinda dumb, to be sure, but the idea that Stratfor represents some massive global octopus is ridiculous. They're barely even a middling-sized company; about 10 years ago they had to close their DC office because they weren't making enough money. This is nothing but a turf war between Assange and Friedman.

NOBODYIMPORTANT

9:55 PM ET

February 29, 2012

February 27th

hmm

http://wikileaks.ch/Stratfor-Emails-US-Has-Issued.html

MAXIMB

1:33 PM ET

March 20, 2012

America needs a less

America needs a less interventionist foreign policy. If a dust up occurs that doesn't imminently affect the U.S. or U.S. interests, the U.S. stays the hell out. Iraq, the Balkans, Darfur, Somalia, Grenada, Vietnam, you name it. I get a chuckle when leftists scream about the "illegal Iraq war" and then turn around and demand that the U.S. go marching into Darfur to make that hellhole all better. All nation building is a fool's game..

"Is rio orange war always forfait bloque inevitable ?"
MaximB

HANS KLOSS

4:52 PM ET

March 25, 2012

what wikileaks told the world

what wikileaks told the world was already talked about in hush tones and it just made the job of journalists around the world a bit tougher. In the sense, there was no intrigue left in botox writing about something different, Pakistan army supports drones, collateral damage in Iraq,The problem with Anonymous and wikileaks is that they are novice who think transparency means better politics. This is contrary to the very idea of politics.

JAN STUHR

5:14 PM ET

March 25, 2012

What wikileaks told the world

What wikileaks told the world was already talked about in hush tones and it just made the job of journalists around the world a bit tougher. In the sense, there was no vrásky intrigue left in writing about something different, Pakistan army supports drones, collateral damage in Iraq,The problem with Anonymous and wikileaks is that they are novice who think transparency means better politics. This is contrary to the very idea of politics. The only time I was excited about wikileaks was when they decided to publish Sarah palin's emails.