WikiLeaks said Monday that it had begun to expose e-mail correspondence from the global geopolitical analysis firm known as Stratfor, detailing the work of the company for clients.
WikiLeaks did not disclose how it obtained the e-mails, but Stratfor acknowledged in December that its data servers were breached by a group of hackers known as Anonymous. The loose-knit group publicly supports WikiLeaks.
Anonymous posted online the names, e-mails and credit card numbers of thousands of Stratfor subscribers.
Now the contents of the e-mails are being exposed — five million pieces of correspondence in all, spanning seven years, WikiLeaks said.
It added that the organization was analyzing the documents with the help of 25 publications around the world, including Rolling Stone in the United States, L’Espresso in Italy and The Hindu in India. WikiLeaks said that Stratfor kept many records on the group and its founder, Julian Assange, who is under house arrest in Britain and wanted for extradition to Sweden in connection with allegations of sex crimes.
“The material contains privileged information about the U.S. government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks,” the group said. “There are more than 4,000 e-mails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.”
Mr. Assange appeared Monday at a streamed news conference from the journalists’ Frontline Club in London.
Stratfor said in a statement that some of the e-mails being published “may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic,” the company said in a statement quoted by Reuters.
“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.
At the London news conference, Mr. Assange said the Stratfor statement seemed to confirm the advice offered by a senior figure in the company in one of the exposed e-mails which he quoted a senior Stratfor executive as saying: “admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.”
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.
This article, “WikiLeaks Publishes Intelligence Firm Emails,” originally appeared at The New York Times.
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