WikiLeaks Lays Bare Stratfor’s Inner Workings

WikiLeaks has today released the correspondence of one of the largest private intelligence companies in the world, Stratfor, in partnership with OWNI, Rolling Stone, ARD, Republica, L’Espresso, Publico and 19 other media organisations.

WikiLeaks has created an online database of five million e-mails, sent between July 2004 and December 2011 by Stratfor employees, including founder and CEO George Friedman. The emails unveil the secrets of a unique company, founded in 1996, which maintains ambiguous ties with state services, employing former intelligence agents, ex-diplomats, retired military officers and an array of analysts based out of Austin, Texas in the US.

Last December, Anonymous announced that they had infiltrated Stratfor’s servers and made copies of a large number of files that would offer an insight into the company’s activities.

In the coming days and weeks, the database created by WikiLeaks should be updated with more details of how the private intelligence firm, referred to by some as a “shadow CIA”, operates. Private intelligence that is marketed by Stratfor to the highest bidder, to private companies as well as government agencies around the world.

The emails highlight the sources and the raw material from which the company creates the reports that they market. Stratfor pays special attention to how it markets itself, deliberately creating an impression of espionage and privileged access.

In this email exchange between a number of senior company officials from October 1, 2009, the question arises of whether to disseminate raw information to customers. After some consideration, the response of a senior analyst sums up the deficit between the mysterious image of the company and the reality of how it operates:

From a branding perspective if we’re serious about Quality, Status and Mystique I think showing too much of our inner workings devalues our Mystique. People don’t know how we collect our intelligence and that’s one of the cool, mysterious things about Stratfor. Seeing raw intelligence come in would be cool for a few weeks but then it would become another expected product and we lose our mystique a little on source collection.

Officially, Stratfor boasts that it disseminates confidential information to clients, but the companies internal emails show that the information they have access to is graded according to its level of confidentiality. Information that “Can’t be found anywhere else” is given an A grade, while B grade information is only available “in limited circles”. The remaining grades refer to information widely available from open sources (OS) but with an “interesting analysis” from the source (grade C); that is nonetheless not widely known (grade D); or is widely accessible and already known (grade F).

Within their internal correspondence, analysts add more fields when reporting on their interactions with sources: the source’s code number; attribution (how to cite the source, e.g “embassy officials”); a description of the source for internal use; whether or not the information can be published; any special precautions; and the name of the Stratfor employee responsible for “handling” the source.

In the reality of its daily exchanges, however, very few of Stratfor’s sources appear to justify such levels of mystery. In most cases, their information comes simply from reading articles on news websites and blogs. In other cases, inspection of the emails reveals sources to be journalists, other analysts, businessmen, sometimes members of the intelligence community or the military, and more rarely diplomats or politicians.

On September 2, 2011, one Stratfor analyst recounts his meeting with a senior adviser and the defense attaché of the Czech Ambassador to Washington. The analyst advises that the senior adviser will soon be appointed as one of the Czech Republic’s Deputy Foreign Ministers. The off-the-record interview, regarding NATO and Russia, is attributed to Stratfor sources in Prague and Washington.

The director of Stratfor, George Friedman, has access to more highly placed sources, who appear to offer analysis rather than specific information to him. In an email dated February 20, 2010, he recalls a meeting with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Paul Volcker, the former director of the US Federal Reserve and adviser to President Obama, and Nicholas Brady, Secretary of the US Treasury under Presidents Reagan and Bush. In July 2011, he mentions a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan.

But the majority of the internal email exchanges are based on information obtained from open sources. Discussions then try to tease out a new and relevant analysis of a situation, drawing together often unverified information.

In an email dated September 13, 2010, one senior analyst, Sean Noonan, sends an article from The New York Observer about the proposed construction of an Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York. Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence and a former special agent with the US Diplomatic Security Service, replies that the Imam behind the project is an FBI “asset”.

The majority of the reports, created for clients willing to spend a small fortune to feel informed, are derived from open source information. In September 2009, for example, Stratfor wrote two reports on bids made in Brazil by three manufacturers of fighter aircraft.

In reality the two reports consist of press articles from the time written about the Swedish company Saab and the French company Dassault, as well as excerpts from those companies’ websites.

In February 2008, an unnamed client orders research into the chemical industry, seeking information on “current and future risks” that businesses in the sector may come up against. They are particularly concerned with oil prices, the risk of nationalisation in some countries and current legislation on chemical products. All the information provided is readily available from open sources.

Stratfor also makes use of documents obtained prior to publication. An analyst with the Eurasia section sends a report from the ratings agency Moody’s related to the Irish debt crisis before its official release.

The classification of some restricted sources are governed by different rules, suggesting ambiguous relationships with people serving in state intelligence services. One source, ‘Geronimo’, is handled personally by Fred Burton, and receives $1,200 a month.