维基解密重装上阵，枪口对准跨国巨头

    维基解密（WikiLeaks）开始发布据自称来自全球情报分析网站Stratfor的500万份电子邮件短短几小时后，人们就意识到，这次泄密造成的影响可能要远远超过上次维基解密发布的几千份外交电文。上次泄密的电文大部分只是关于流言、繁琐俗事和低层面的闲聊而已。然而，这此Stratfor的邮件泄密可能对全球范围内的公司、政府和一些个人产生爆炸性的影响，尤其是对Stratfor本身。当然，也可能不会有那么严重的影响。但至少，这批邮件看上去要有意思得多。

    短期内很多公司的公关部看来都要加班加点了。长期影响如何，很大程度上将取决于未来几周陆续披露的内容。这些邮件显示了Stratfor员工与客户公司（包括一些全球最大的跨国公司）高管的一些商谈内容。迄今为止，还只发布了几百封电子邮件。即便没有定时炸弹，这些信息至少也是很有意思的。目前，所有电子邮件的真实性都没有得到验证，但根据迄今为止的一些信息可以知道：

    • 2011年5月，Stratfor的一些员工谈到，美联银行（Wachovia）在墨西哥毒品集团洗钱案中的参与程度和涉及金额可能都超过已知水平，针对该行的调查仍在继续。根据一封据称是Stratford员工发给几位同事的电子邮件称，这位员工的一位“美国中央情报局（CIA）密友”告诉他，美联银行是“一场正在进行的调查”的对象。富国银行（Wells Fargo）下属的美联银行已经就此案达成和解，但并不承认存在过错。2010年，美联银行被没收1.10亿美元 ，另外还被罚款5,000万美元。

    • 另一份电子邮件讨论显示，2009年可口可乐（Coca-Cola）曾请Stratfor搜集动物保护组织“善待动物组织”（People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals，简称PETA）的情报。可口可乐担心，次年的温哥华冬季奥运会期间可能会出现抗议活动。

    • 根据维基解密，Stratfor员工和陶氏化学（Dow Chemical）员工及其他人之间的邮件往来显示，Stratfor曾代表陶氏化学搜集反企业宣传鼓动组织The Yes Men的情报。陶氏化学担心1984年印度博帕尔灾难（1984 Bhopal disaster）二十五周年可能会出现激进活动。（1984年，美国一家公司在印度博帕尔的工厂发生了严重的毒气泄漏事件，造成2万多人死亡，几十万人身受其害，这家公司后来被陶氏化学收购。——译注）

    • 可能最令人震惊的消息，至少对于Statfor而言，是有邮件显示该公司正在计划设立一只名为StratCap的基金，根据公司搜集的情报信息进行投资交易。一份据称由Stratfor创始人兼董事长乔治•弗莱德曼撰写的邮件称，该基金“将使我们有一个全新但相关的渠道，也就是一只投资基金，来利用我们在全球搜集的情报。我们曾为其他对冲基金提供咨询，如今我们有了自己的基金……”参与此次讨论的还有当时在高盛（Goldman Sachs）任职的谢伊•莫伦兹。据维基解密称，弗莱德曼在邮件中写道：“StratCap要做的是利用我们的情报和分析，通过一系列地缘政治工具进行交易，特别是政府债券和货币等等。”邮件称，莫伦兹“大举”投资了逾400万美元。

    Just hours after WikiLeaks started publishing the 5 million emails it says come from the global-intelligence publisher Stratfor, it's becoming clear that this data dump could have a much larger impact than WikiLeaks' earlier publication of thousands of diplomatic cables. Those cables revealed, for the most part, mere gossip and mundane, low-level chatter. But the Stratfor emails could be explosive for companies, governments and individuals around the world, not least for Stratfor itself. Or they might not. At the very least, this batch of data seems far more interesting.

    In the short term, it appears that the public-relations departments of many companies are going to be clocking a lot of overtime hours. In the longer term, much depends on what is revealed in the coming couple of weeks. The emails show Stratfor employees in discussions with executives at client firms, which include some of the biggest multinational corporations on the planet. So far, only a few hundred emails have been posted. If there are no ticking bombs, the forthcoming information at the very least promises to be interesting. The authenticity of the emails hasn't been verified in all cases, but according to some of the messages thus far:

    • Stratfor employees in May 2011 discussed the possibility that Wachovia's involvement in laundering the money of Mexican drug cartels could run deeper and involve more money than was already known, and that an investigation of the bank was continuing. According to the purported email of a Stratford employee to some of his colleagues, one of his "CIA cronies" had told him that Wachovia was the subject of an "ongoing investigation." Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo (WFC) as it was when this discussion took place, settled the case against it without admitting wrongdoing. Wachovia in 2010 forfeited $110 million and was fined another $50 million.

    • Coca-Cola (KO) in 2009 asked Stratfor to gather information on the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, according to another purported email discussion. The company was worried about possible protest activity during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver the following year.

    • Stratfor gathered intelligence on the anti-corporate agitprop group The Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical (DOW), as shown by several discussions among Stratfor and Dow employees and others, according to WikiLeaks. The company was worried about activism on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

    • Perhaps most striking, at least for Statfor itself, is the revelation that the company was planning to create a fund, called StratCap, through which it would trade on intelligence information it gathered. An email purportedly written by George Friedman, Stratfor's founder and chairman, said the fund "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…" Involved in that discussion was Shea Morenz, then with Goldman Sachs (GS). Friedman wrote, according to WikiLeaks, "What StratCap will do is use our intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like." Morenz invested, according to the email, "substantially" more than $4 million.