PRAGOTI

 This early morning, I came across a news item that mentioned that Wikileaks had now a new smoking gun on its site - the entire tranche of close to 5 million emails exchanged between Stratfor employees internally and externally. Stratfor, is a "private intelligence" company which publishes intelligence information for public consumption ostensibly. But that it seems ..is only a public facade. This agency is more than that; it also uses the tactics adopted by traditional spooks to wheedle out information from paid (or otherwise) informants - in government and out of it - across the globe and have also acted as a some kind of a shady operator in the interests of the US covert agencies as well. 

Thought I would do a comprehensive blog post on this based on the initial reports on Wikileaks (which is partnering other media organisations - 25 of them including The Hindu in India to release analytical information). But then, the diligent Prabir Purkayastha had already written this on Newsclick. So, the article is linked. The article comments on the facade that Stratfor maintains, its aims to "financialise" its activities, its monitoring job on activists fighting for the cause of Bhopal gas victims and much more.