WikiLeaks publishes Stratfor emails linked to Anonymous attack

WikiLeaks on Monday 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 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 website 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 website.

The company promises subscribers will "gain a thorough understanding of international affairs, including what's happening, why it's happening, and what will happen next."

WikiLeaks predicts that the significance of the emails will only become clear over the next few weeks as its 25 media partners and the public sift through the raft of messages.

Its media partners include Rolling Stone magazine, The Hindu newspaper and Italy's La Repubblica.

The group claims to have found evidence that Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack against international forces in Afghanistan in 2006.

The group also alleges it has proof that Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of activists seeking redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India.

Bradley Manning, the man suspected of turning over a massive cache of classified US documents to the secret-spilling site, on Thursday declined to enter a plea at his arraignment.

Manning, a 24-year-old US Army private, is charged with 22 counts in connection with one of the biggest intelligence breaches in US history.

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Julian Assange says 'Financial blockade' may close WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said on Monday that his controversial website could be forced to shut down by the end of the year because a 10-month-old "financial blockade" had sharply reduced the donations on which it depends.

Calling the blockade a "dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic" attack led by the United States, Assange said at a news conference that it had deprived his organization of "tens of millions of dollars," and warned, "If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade, we will not be able to continue by the turn of the new year."

Since the end of 2010, financial intermediaries - including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union - have refused to allow donations to WikiLeaks to flow through their systems, he said, blocking "95 percent" of the website's revenue and leaving it to operate on its cash reserves for the past 10 months. An aide said that WikiLeaks was now receiving less than $10,000 a month in donations.

Assange said that WikiLeaks had been forced to halt work on the processing of tens of thousands of secret documents that it has received, and to turn its attention instead to lawsuits it has filed in the United States, Australia, Scandinavian countries and elsewhere, as well as to a formal petition to the European Commission to try to restore donors' ability to send it money through normal channels.

WikiLeaks receives and publishes confidential documents from whistle-blowers and leakers, who are eager to see the site continue with the "publishing" sensations that drew worldwide attention last year. WikiLeaks released and passed to news organizations huge quantities of secret U.S. military and diplomatic cables on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other subjects.

Assange held the London news conference Monday while on a brief break from his effective house arrest on a country estate 100 miles outside the capital. Limits on his movements are part of the bail conditions imposed on him last year while British courts decide whether to extradite him to Sweden.

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