The Global Intelligence Files,
files released so far...
2564
The Global Intelligence Files

### Index pages

List of Releases

### by Date of Document

unspecified
2001
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

### by Date of Release

2001-03-13
2010-03-10
2011-03-05
2011-03-15
2012-01-29
2012-02-27
2012-02-28
2012-02-29
2012-03-01
2012-03-02
2012-03-03
2012-03-04
2012-03-05
2012-03-06
2012-03-07
2012-03-08
2012-03-09
2012-03-10
2012-03-11
2012-03-12
2012-03-13
2012-03-14
2012-03-15
2012-03-16
2012-03-17
2012-03-19
2012-03-20
2012-03-23
2012-03-25
2012-03-26
2012-03-27
2012-04-01
2012-04-02
2012-04-24
2012-04-26
2012-04-30
2012-05-10
2012-06-18
2012-06-20
2012-07-01
2012-07-24
2012-07-28
2012-07-29
2012-07-30
2012-07-31
2012-08-01
2012-08-02
2012-08-05
2012-08-06
2012-08-07
2012-08-08
2012-08-09
2012-08-10
2012-08-11
2012-08-12
2012-08-13
2012-08-14
2012-08-15
2012-08-16
2012-08-17
2012-08-18
2012-08-19
2012-08-20
2012-08-21
2012-08-22
2012-08-23
2012-08-24
2012-08-25
2012-08-26
2012-08-27
2012-08-29
2012-08-30
2012-08-31
2012-09-01
2012-09-02
2012-09-03
2012-09-04
2012-09-05
2012-09-06
2012-09-07
2012-09-09

### Our Partners

ABC Color - Paraguay
Al Akhbar - Lebanon
Al Masry Al Youm - Egypt
Asia Sentinel - Hong Kong
Bivol - Bulgaria
Carta Capital - Brazil
CIPER - Chile
Dawn Media - Pakistan
L'Espresso - Italy
La Repubblica - Italy
La Jornada - Mexico
La Nacion - Costa Rica
Malaysia Today - Malaysia
McClatchy - United States
Nawaat - Tunisia
NDR/ARD - Germany
Owni - France
Pagina 12 - Argentina
Philip Dorling - Fairfax media contributor - Australia
Plaza Publica - Guatemala
Publica - Brazil
Publico.es - Spain
Rolling Stone - United States
Russian Reporter - Russia
Ta Nea - Greece
Taraf - Turkey
The Hindu - India
The Yes Men - Bhopal Activists
Sunday Star-Times - New Zealand

### Community resources

Supporters Support Wikileaks Follow us on Twitter Twitter this Follow us on Facebook

courage is contagious

# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date 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 Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## Re: Info - Wiki Founder

Released on 2012-08-15 00:00 GMT

Email-ID | 1033431
Date | 2010-12-01 21:17:58
From | bayless.parsley@stratfor.com
To | analysts@stratfor.com
List-Name | analysts@stratfor.com

read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
On 12/1/10 2:15 PM, Lena Bell wrote:
this is a good feature piece The Age newspaper did back in May... a lot
of people were talking about it then because so little is known about
the man. Some of the more personal, historical background is pasted
below after URL. My personal opinion? I think he is very intelligent but
disenchanted and as journo writes:
In another life, Assange might have been a mathematician. He spent four
years studying maths, mostly at Melbourne University - with stints at
the Australian National University in Canberra - but never graduated,
disenchanted, he says, with how many of his fellow students were
conducting research for the US defence system. 'There are key cases
which are just really f---ing obnoxious,'' he says.
Assange isn't paid a salary by WikiLeaks. He has investments, which he
won't discuss. But during the 1990s he worked in computer security in
Australia and overseas, devised software programmes - in 1997 he
co-invented ''Rubberhose deniable encryption'', which he describes as a
cryptographic system made for human rights workers wanting to protect
sensitive data in the field - and also became a key figure in the free
software movement.
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-secret-life-of-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-20100521-w1um.html
The former teenage hacker from Melbourne, whose mystique as an internet
subversive, a resourceful loner with no fixed address, travelling
constantly between countries with laptop and backpack, constitutes what
you might call Assange's romantic appeal.
But then there's the flip side: a man who believes in extreme
transparency, but evades and obfuscates when it comes to talking about
himself in the rare interviews that he gives. In the past, at least,
these have hardly ever been face to face.
The secretiveness extends to those close to him. One woman who speaks to
me on the condition of total anonymity lived in the same share house in
Melbourne as Assange for a few months in early 2007, when WikiLeaks was
in its incubation period. The house was the hub, and it was inhabited by
computer geeks.
There were beds everywhere, she says. There was even a bed in the
kitchen. This woman slept on a mattress in Assange's room, and says she
would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find him still
glued to his computer. He frequently forget to eat or sleep, wrote
mathematical formulas all over the walls and the doors, and used only
red light bulbs in his room - on the basis that early man, if waking
suddenly, would see only the gentle light of the campfire, and fall
asleep again. He also went through a period of frustration that the
human body has to be fed several times a day and experimented with
eating just one meal every two days, in order to be more efficient. ''He
was always extremely focused,'' she says.
Assange first visited Sweden in the 1990s - and WikiLeaks is hosted on a
main server in Sweden, where the identities of confidential sources are
protected by law.
This doesn't prove anything, of course - and WikiLeaks only moved its
main server to Sweden two years ago, after the Julius Baer Bank tried to
close down the website. Even so, I email Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's
widow, to ask if the two of them ever met Assange - explaining that he
helped research a remarkable 1997 book, /Underground/, about the
exploits of an extraordinary group of young Melbourne hackers, written
by the Melbourne academic Suelette Dreyfus. The hackers all had monikers
in the book: Assange is said to be the character Mendax. Assange
convinced Dreyfus to release the book online, and according to one
source I spoke to, there was great interest in the book in Sweden - and
in China.
''About Julian Assange - well, why don't you ask him?'' Gabrielsson
emails back.
It isn't the most urgent question I have for Assange, who I meet in
early May, the day after he slips back into Melbourne, his home town. He
arrived on a flight from Europe, via the US. Or so I understand from the
person acting as our inbetween.
The same contact provides a Melbourne address, and instructions. ''Don't
call a cab, find one on the street; turn off your mobile phone before
you catch the cab and preferably, remove the batteries.''
And here he is - a tall, thin, pale figure with that remarkable white
hair, looking very tired, and wearing creased, student-style dark
clothes and boots, and backpack.
As we shake hands, he inclines his head slightly in a courtly, old world
manner, at odds with his youthful, student-traveller looks. When I
remark that there's a lot to ask him, he replies, ''That's all right -
I'm not going to answer half of it.''
Is Assange his real name? Yes, he replies, then says it's the name in
his passport. ''What's in a name?'' he then adds mysteriously, casting
doubt on his first answer.
At the time of writing, his passport status was apparently back to
normal after immigration officials at Melbourne Airport said that his
passport was going to be cancelled on the grounds that it was too tatty.
It has been in a couple of rivers, Assange allows of the state of his
passport. The first time, as he recalls, in December 2006, when he was
crossing a swollen river during heavy rain in southern Tasmania, and was
swept out to sea. He swam back in. ''My conclusion from that experience
is that the universe doesn't give a damn about you, so it's a good thing
you do.''
Why did he have his passport with him? He had everything he needed for
three weeks of survival, he replies. He needed his passport for ID when
he flew to Tasmania.
Doesn't he have a driver's licence? ''No comment.''
How true is the image of him as the enigmatic founder of WikiLeaks,
constantly on the move, with no real place to call home? Is this really
how he lives his life?
''Do I live my life as an enigmatic man?''
No - is it true you're constantly on the move?
''Pretty much true.''
Does he have one base he'd call home?
''I have four bases where I would go if I was sick, which is how I think
about where home is.''
He has spent the best part of the past six months in Iceland, he says.
And the next six months? ''It depends on which area of the world I'm
needed most. We're an international organisation. We deal with
international problems,'' he replies.
Assange mentions four bases, but names only two. The one in Iceland and
another in Kenya, where he has spent a lot of time, on and off, in the
past couple of years.
The Kroll report, released on WikiLeaks, reportedly swung the Kenyan
presidential election in 2007.
When he's in the country, Assange lives in a compound in Nairobi with
other foreigners, mainly members of NGOs such as Medecins Sans
Frontieres. He originally went to Kenya in 2007 to give a lecture on
WikiLeaks, when it was up and running. ''And ended up staying there,'' I
suggest encouragingly.
''Mmmm.''
As a result of liking the place or ...
''Well, it has got extraordinary opportunities for reforms. It had a
revolution in the 1970s. It has only been a democracy since 2004 ... I
was introduced to senior people in journalism, in human rights very
quickly.''
He has travelled to Siberia. Is there a third base there?
''No comment. I wish. The bear steak is good.''
Why did he go to Georgia?
''How do you know about that?''
I read it somewhere, I reply. It was a rumour. ''Ah, a rumour,'' he
says.
But he did go there? ''It's better that I don't comment on that, because
Georgia is not such a big place.''
Living permanently in a state of exile, which can become addictive,
means that you always have the sharp eye of the outsider, I suggest.
''The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives
you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the
structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of
mental independence,'' Assange replies.
"You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can
concentrate on the serious matters. Australia is a bit of a political
wasteland. That's OK, as long as people recognise that. As long as
people recognise that Australia is a suburb of a country called
Anglo-Saxon.''
Could he ever live in one place again? A brief silence. ''I don't think
so,'' he says finally.
''I don't see myself as a computer guru,'' he remarks at one point. ''I
live a broad intellectual life. I'm good at a lot of things, except for
spelling.''
At one point, thinking about some of the material leaked on WikiLeaks, I
ask Assange how he defines national security. ''We don't,'' he says
crisply. "We're not interested in that. We're interested in justice. We
are a supranational organisation. So we're not interested in national
security.''
How does he justify keeping his own life as private as possible,
considering that he believes in extreme transparency?
''I don't justify it,'' he says, with just a hint of mischievousness.
''No one has sent us any official documents that were not published
previously on me. Should they do so, and they meet our editorial
criteria, we will publish them.''
Assange isn't paid a salary by WikiLeaks. He has investments, which he
won't discuss. But during the 1990s he worked in computer security in
Australia and overseas, devised software programmes - in 1997 he
co-invented ''Rubberhose deniable encryption'', which he describes as a
cryptographic system made for human rights workers wanting to protect
sensitive data in the field - and also became a key figure in the free
software movement.
The whole point of free software, he comments, is to ''liberate it in
all senses''. He adds: ''It' s part of the intellectual heritage of man.
True intellectual heritage can't be bound up in intellectual property.''
Did being arrested, and later on finding himself in a courtroom, push
him into a completely different reality that he had never thought about
- and eventually in a direction that eventually saw him start thinking
along the lines of a website like WikiLeaks, that would take on the
world?
''That [experience] showed me how the justice system and bureaucracy
worked, and did not work; what its abilities were and what its
limitations were,'' he replies. ''And justice wasn't something that came
out of the justice system. Justice was something that you bring to the
justice system. And if you're lucky, or skilled, and you're in a country
that isn't too corrupt, you can do that.''
In another life, Assange might have been a mathematician. He spent four
years studying maths, mostly at Melbourne University - with stints at
the Australian National University in Canberra - but never graduated,
disenchanted, he says, with how many of his fellow students were
conducting research for the US defence system.
''There are key cases which are just really f---ing obnoxious,'' he
says.
According to Assange, the US Defence Advance Research Project Agency was
funding research which involved optimising the efficiency of a military
bulldozer called the Grizzly Plough, which was used in the Iraqi desert
during Operation Desert Storm during the 1991 Gulf War.
''It has a problem in that it gets damaged [from] the sand rolling up in
front. The application of this bulldozer is to move at 60 kilometres an
hour, sweeping barbed wire and so on before it, and get the sand and put
it in the trenches where the [Iraqi] troops are, and bury them all alive
and then roll over the top. So that's what Melbourne University's
applied maths department was doing - studying how to improve the
efficiency of the Grizzly Plough.''
Assange says he did a lot of soul-searching before he finally quit his
studies in 2007. He had already started working with other people on a
model of WikiLeaks by early 2006.
There were people at the physics conference, he goes on, who were career
physicists, ''and there was just something about their attire, and the
way they moved their bodies, and of course the bags on their backs
didn't help much either. I couldn't respect them as men''.
His university experience didn't define his cynicism, though. Assange
says that he's extremely cynical anyway. ''I painted every corner,
floor, wall and ceiling in the 'room' I was in, black, until there was
only one corner left. I mean intellectually,'' he adds. ''To me, it was
the forced move [in chess], when you have to do something or you'll lose
the game.''
So WikiLeaks was his forced move?
''That's the way it feels to me, yes. There were no other options left
to me on the table.''
WikiLeaks, he says, has released more classified documents than the rest
of the world press combined.
''That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are -
rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How
is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public
more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world
press combined? It's disgraceful.''
Where does Assange see WikiLeaks in 10 years? "It's not what I want the
world to be. It's what I want the rest of the world to be," he replies.
He would like to see all media develop their own forms of WikiLeaks.
That would put his own website out of business, I point out.
''We have a proposal to [an American foundation] for a grant to just
that,'' he replies, explaining that WikiLeaks could create systems for
all media organisations.
A thought: has he ever met Rupert Murdoch? ''No.''
Fred Burton wrote:
Lena - What is this dude's Aussie background? He seems like a lunatic
or a left-winger? Angry Aussie w/an axe to grind. Belongs in Swedish
politics.
FBI is in bed w/the Aussies. I'm sure we are listening in to every
call
the jamoke is making.
Lena Bell wrote:
Not sure that's happening re Oz; federal police have opened up an
investigation to see whether or not any Australian criminal laws
were
broken. - where did Nick get the insight about an agreed extradition
-
there is nothing about this on OS and of course it would mean
Assange
would have to come home first. Something he is very unlikely to do.
GovGen hasn't ruled out canceling his passport incidentally.
His mother has recently been interviewed by the ABC and she is
scared
that he will be "hunted down and jailed"... will make it difficult
to
pursue the scenario painted below. Australians are likely to back
him.
You wouldn't believe how much press/public sentiment david hicks
created in Guantanamo Bay. It really forced the Howard govt to
change
tactics... esp when polling results overall were so poor.**
Bayless Parsley wrote:
The main thing I was trying to ask about earlier was in regards to
the logistics of actually detaining the guy.
I got the sense that Fred was saying US agents could physically do
it
in another country. Perhaps I just misunderstood what he was
trying
to say, because I find that really hard to believe (as rendition
is
not an option in this case, which is why I brought up the fact
that
some Republican congressmen are trying to call Assange a
"terrorist"
now).
Basic fact is that any move to arrest the guy (assuming they get
an
indictment for him) would require that a friendly government do it
and then extradite him. Nick Miller told me the Australians have
already offered to do this, as Assange is an Australian citizen,
and
Australia is the Canada of the southern hemisphere when it comes
to
its relations with the US.
Also, Karen had a very good point about the sex charges. Weren't
those dropped months ago after the initial allegations? What do ya
know, after the US explictly warned him time and again to stop
publishing the cables, it pops back up all of a sudden...
On 12/1/10 12:36 PM, Reva Bhalla wrote:
can you charge them with anything if they paid for the
information?
On Dec 1, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Sean Noonan wrote:
You mean by helping Manning get the information off the
networks? Training, computer codes, flash drives, etc??
That's a good point. On 12/1/10 12:31 PM, George Friedman
wrote:
He might have facilitated or suborned the access. For
example,
provided the means for distirbuting it.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *Sean Noonan <sean.noonan@stratfor.com>
*Date: *Wed, 1 Dec 2010 12:19:09 -0600 (CST)
*To: *Analyst List<analysts@stratfor.com>
*ReplyTo: *Analyst List <analysts@stratfor.com>
*Subject: *Re: Info - Wiki Founder
I think it's very difficult to indict him on anything
though. MAYBE espionage, but even those laws are still too
old. I think
your FBI contact is right (sadly). the US can really only
get the
person who did the leak, not who published it--George also
pointed
this out over the weekend. What would the sealed indictment
be for?
(this is also why they will get him on some other charges in
another country....)
On 12/1/10 12:15 PM, Fred Burton wrote:
Sealed indictment. Hand the warrant over to the USMS to
execute.
Happens everyday. The USMS works w/their counterparts and
lock
the dude
up.
Bayless Parsley wrote:
How would it work if the US wanted to catch such a high
profile
target
like this? Despite what one Republican senator may have
said the
other
day (can't remember who, or if it was even a senator),
he's not a
"terrorist," and so rendition..... wouldn't really be an
option.
But legally, you'd have to have the host government's
cooperation. Is
there any way aside from that scenario that could lead
to his
arrest
on charges of breaking US laws?
On 12/1/10 12:12 PM, Fred Burton wrote:
>From a very good contact @ the FBI --
How come you guys haven't picked this left-wing
lunatic
WikiLeaks founder up on
some sort of trumped up charge?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1st Amendment overprotects journalists.
--
Sean Noonan
Tactical Analyst
Office: +1 512-279-9479
Mobile: +1 512-758-5967
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
www.stratfor.com
--
Sean Noonan
Tactical Analyst
Office: +1 512-279-9479
Mobile: +1 512-758-5967
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
www.stratfor.com