The Stratfor logo (Credit: Stratfor)

In 2012, WikiLeaks publishes over five million e-mails from the US-based private intelligence company Stratfor. Stratfor provides confidential intelligence to major corporations and branches of the US government.

At some unknown point in either 2010 or 2011, Bart Mongoven, vice president for Stratfor’s public policy intelligence group, writes in an email to Rodger Baker, Stratfor’s vice president of geopolitical analysis: “[Bill] Clinton’s biggest project on climate change comes through the Clinton Global Initiative, which has climate among its top priorities. The CGI acts as a funnel for money from wealthy individuals and corporations toward programs and policies that Clinton supports (or that support his or his wife’s political objectives). CGI has raised more than $100 million for climate change organizations. […] CGI and the Clinton Foundation are suspected of being shakedown operations for the Clintons, and especially for Hillary Clinton from 2001 to 2008. If a corporation wanted to be on the Clintons’ good side, it had to show up at CGI or give money to the foundation. The money from CGI or the foundation would go to non-profits that promoted issues of importance to Hillary Clinton’s political calculus. In other words, if she needed something to be an important national issue, he would pressure a corporation or billionaire to fund activists who would promote the issue that she needed. CGI has been a good way to read the tea leaves on Hillary Clinton, and it may still be. Either way, the future priorities of CGI are important to understand. Other, less cynical people, say that the CGI and the Clinton Foundation are simple, well-meaning organizations dedicated to funding good works and making the world a better place. (I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.)” (WikiLeaks, 10/19/2012)