Private intelligence firm Stratfor was paid by Coca-Cola to gauge the threat of Olympic protesters, provided Dow Chemical information on environmental activists, and sells what clients and subscribers consider some of the best geopolitical analysis that money can buy.
Now the Texas-based think tank is the latest target of WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, who says his anti-secrecy group has more than five million of Stratfor's emails and is promising to release damaging material in the coming weeks.
The first, small batch published on Monday contained little that was particularly scintillating - but revealed clients that Stratfor has long safeguarded and refused to disclose. They range from local universities to mega corporations like Coca-Cola, which apparently worried about animal-rights supporters crashing and disrupting the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.