Wikileaks Release Suggests Stratfor Inside Info Plan with Goldman Sachs Exec

By Ryan Villarreal: Subscribe to Ryan's RSS feed
IBTimes.com
February 27, 2012 6:26 PM EST

WikiLeaks released more than 5 million e-mails Monday hacked from U.S.-based global intelligence firm Strategy Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), revealing an alleged plan between the firm's CEO and a Goldman Sachs executive to set up an investment fund that would rely on inside information gathered by the company.

A September 2011 company-wide e-mail composed by Stratfor CEO George Friedman indicates that Goldman Sachs financial adviser and former Managing Director Shea Morenz was directly involved in the establishment of the investment fund StratCap.

"Shea Morenz provided us with two opportunities," wrote Friedman.

"First, he made an investment in Stratfor designed to give us the capital needed to build our staff and our marketing. Second, he proposed a new venture, StratCap, which would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue -- an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds. We would now have our own, itself fully funded by Shea."

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http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/305532/20120227/wikileaks-stratfor-stratcap-goldman-sachs-fund-julian.htm

'Shadow CIA' buys state secrets for cash via Swiss bank accounts, claims WikiLeaks as it releases 'stolen' files

Five million emails obtained from U.S.-based global security analysis firm Stratfor 'will reveal murky truth about intelligence gathering'

Julian Assange claims firm is monitoring activists for corporate giants and taking information from U.S. government department insider

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Last updated at 8:43 PM on 27th February 2012

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor.

The emails, dated from July 2004 to late December 2011, are said to reveal the 'inner workings' of US-based firm known as the 'Shadow CIA'.

Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'.

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[font color="green"]The group said the emails expose a 'revolving door' in private intelligence companies in the U.S., claiming government and diplomatic sources give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money.[/font color]

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2107041/WikiLeaks-releases-stolen-files-Shadow-CIA-buys-state-secrets-cash-Swiss-bank.html

Goss Knew Foggo Shared A Girlfriend With Russian Spy, But Hired Him Anyway

Zachary Roth | February 26, 2009, 4:24PM

The Dusty Foggo story has never reflected well on Porter Goss -- the man who, as CIA director, gave Foggo the number 3 job at the agency. But it looks like we didn't know the half of it.

Congressional Quarterly has a juicy scoop:

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's CIA dossier included allegations that he was sharing a woman with a suspected Russian mole, according to a top former spy agency official and other sources.

CIA Director Porter J. Goss knew about the allegation when he hired Foggo to be the agency's executive director, its third highest official, an aide said today.

But Merrell Moorhead, an aide to Goss at the CIA from 2004 to 2006, said CIA security officials later withdrew that and other serious allegations about Foggo's record and "gave him a clean bill of health."

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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/dusty-foggo/2009/02/

Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations

by Marcus Stern
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2009, 12 a.m.

Paramilitary agents for the CIA’s super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to “light up” targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD’s sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.

That information was contained in a series of court filings released in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA.

One remarkable affidavit came from a leader of SAD, a branch of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which handles covert actions. It indicates that Foggo forced SAD to use a shell company set up by defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes to handle its sensitive air operations, even though Wilkes and his company had no experience in clandestine aviation operations.

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The documents also argue that Wilkes and Foggo tried to incorporate the military’s need for armored vehicles into an array of contracts that involved not only the CIA’s sensitive air operations but also water for troops in Iraq. Wilkes’ and Foggo’s deals—during which they hid their long, personal friendship from other government officials—included markups of up to 60 percent on the goods and services they sold the CIA.

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http://www.propublica.org/article/corruption-touched-cias-covert-operations

Dusty Foggo’s Girlfriend, John Rizzo, and the Salt Pit

By: emptywheel Sunday March 28, 2010 11:31 am

EXCERPT...

Details of how Foggo got his girlfriend hired appeared in the sentencing documents for his conviction in the Brent Wilkes/Duke Cunningham case (they were included not just to show Foggo’s corruption, but also because, over the course of the case, Foggo had repeatedly claimed to be happily and faithfully married).

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Now, there is no definitive reason to think there’s a link between Foggo’s decision that two lower level guys who killed a detainee in Afghanistan should get off with no punishment and his girlfriend’s remarkable career at CIA.

But it’s clear from both the AP story on the Salt Pit and Yoo’s response to the OPR Report that the Salt Pit death happened at least partly because of instructions that came from Langley, instructions that may have involved Rizzo directly. And we know that within weeks of the time Foggo saw the details CIA revealed in his sentencing memorandum, he decided to get all chatty with John Durham about the torture tape destruction (note, this was before Durham’s mandate was extended to include the Salt Pit death, so Foggo’s testimony couldn’t have pertained directly to this review). [font color="red"]We also know that DOJ started to have a “real problem” with Carol Lam’s investigation of Duke Cunningham and Brent Wilkes as soon as she asked for a search warrant of Foggo.[/font color]

Dusty Foggo got incredible levels of protection while in his last two years at CIA, protection that probably goes beyond what you’d expect of his senior position. With each new detail of his involvement in the torture program, it seems more and more likely that that protection extended at least in part from the role he played in covering up torture.

SOURCE: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/03/28/dusty-foggos-girlfriend-john-rizzo-and-the-salt-pit/

Sampson Admits He Made Call To Silence FBI Complaints Over Lam’s Firing

By ThinkProgress on Mar 29, 2007 at 2:00 pm

During today’s hearing, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) questioned Kyle Sampson about the head of the FBI office in San Diego, Dan Dzwilewski, who told reporters in January that Carol Lam’s firing was a blow to efforts to prosecute ongoing cases.

At a hearing with FBI Director Robert Mueller this week, Feinstein said that Dzwilewski’s office had told her it had subsequently been contacted and “warned to say no more.” Under questioning today, Sampson acknowledged he had made a call to complain about Dzwilewski’s statement. But Sampson said he had merely “asked…why an FBI employee was commenting on that issue.” Watch it:
< flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/03/lamfbi.320.240.flv >

Also today, [font color="green"]Sampson claimed that the “real problem” with Carol Lam that Sampson referred to in an email “was her office’s prosecution of immigration cases.”[/font coor]

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http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/03/29/11483/sampson-feinstein/

Blogging About WikiLeaks Could Get You Fired

A State Department employee is under investigation for disclosing classified information. His big disclosure? Linking to a widely publicized WikiLeaks document on his personal blog.

—By Peter Van Buren | Tom Dispatch / Mother Jones, Tue Sep. 27, 2011 12:56 PM PDT

On the same day that more than 250,000 unredacted State Department cables hemorrhaged out onto the Internet, I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and told I was under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information. The evidence of my crime? A posting on my blog from the previous month that included a link to a WikiLeaks document already available elsewhere on the web.

As we sat in a small, gray, windowless room, resplendent with a two-way mirror, multiple ceiling-mounted cameras, and iron rungs on the table to which handcuffs could be attached, the two DS agents stated that the inclusion of that link amounted to disclosing classified material. In other words, a link to a document posted by who-knows-who on a public website available at this moment to anyone in the world was the legal equivalent of me stealing a top secret report, hiding it under my coat, and passing it to a Chinese spy in a dark alley.

The agents demanded to know who might be helping me with my blog ("Name names!&quot , if I had donated any money from my upcoming book on my wacky year-long State Department assignment to a forward military base in Iraq, and if so to which charities, the details of my contract with my publisher, how much money (if any) I had been paid, and—by the way—whether I had otherwise "transferred" classified information.

Had I, they asked, looked at the WikiLeaks site at home on my own time on my own computer? Every blog post, every Facebook post, and every tweet by every State Department employee, they told me, must be precleared by the Department prior to "publication." Then they called me back for a second 90-minute interview, stating that my refusal to answer questions would lead to my being fired, never mind the Fifth (or the First) Amendment.

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http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/wikileaks-classified-information-state-department-investigates-employee

WikiLeaks Goes Inside Corporate America's Wannabe CIA

What do Coke, Goldman, the Marines, and the Knights of Columbus have in common? They all paid Stratfor to act as their own private intelligence agency.

—By Adam Weinstein | Mother Jones, Mon Feb. 27, 2012 1:42 PM PST

EXCERPT...

Few companies seemed as concerned about threats from activists as Archer Daniels Midland, the "Goliath of world food production" Mother Jones once described as equally concerned with "possible price-fixing in Bulgaria" and "influence-peddling in Washington." Shortly after Stratfor started its Global Vantage service, Rich Ryan of ADM's "investigative unit" began to hit them up for intel on political enemies:

• On July 24, 2006: "Rich called to ask a few more questions about activist campaigns to pass to other business divisions. Watching for more information."

• Two days later: "Talked with Rich several times about activist campaign against the company."

• On November 9, 2006: "Received email from Rich regarding some animal rights protesters. Setting up a meeting while he and Mark are in DC next week."

• Five days later: "Rich came into the office for a brief discussion about animal rights as it relates to their new facilty [sic.] in Decatur. He seems very happy with the service, and happy with our information and assistance."

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http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/wikileaks-strafor-leak-corporate-intelligence

Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

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Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html