Today, Wednesday 10th October, WikiLeaks begins releasing over 200,000 Global Intelligence Files (GI Files) relating to the U.S. presidential elections. Each week day we will release thousands of emails referring to Obama, Biden, Romney and the Republican and Democratic parties. Today we will publish over 13,734 emails referring to republican(s), Romney, RNC and/or GOP, ranging from 3rd January 2011 to 19th December 2011.

The GI Files total over five million emails from the U.S. private intelligence firm Stratfor. Stratfor is a secretive multi-national private intelligence firm, providing services to large corporations, and government agencies. Despite providing the U.S. government with “global intelligence” services there is no public oversight of Stratfor. The emails highlight Stratfor staff’s revolving door with government offices; Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Although Stratfor boasts U.S. governmental sources and reports to have a lot of influence on western decision makers, their emails reveal poor working and security methods and show strong political bias within the organization.