Why I Love WikiLeaks: Bank of America Threat Revealed

by Sally Kohn
Sally Kohn is a community organizer and progressive political commentator. She is the Founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab

No, it’s not just diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks got its hands on.  According to a November piece in Raw Story, Julian Assange said in a 2009 interview that he had 5GB of secret documents downloaded from Bank of America computers.  For Bank of America’s sake, hopefully some of those files are the missing deeds to homes it foreclosed without any documentation. More likely, the files contain blatant greedy trash-talking of the sort that rocked Goldman Sachs, the flagrant “who cares if we screw over customers, homeowners and the economy in general as long as we make a good profit” types.

According to the New York Times, Bank of America has retained SWAT teams of lawyers and accountants to prepare for the WikiLeaks dump.  Now, I know we are all innocent until proven guilty, but generally, an innocent person, when facing possible public charges, hires one lawyer.  If you hire hundreds you start to look kinda guilty.

In the interview regarding the potential bank leak, Assange said, “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms.”  Here’s hoping.  It’s a shame that Congress and the White House are so deeply stuffed in the pockets of Wall Street they rarely generate serious and toothy investigations themselves.  Fortunately, WikiLeaks is shaping up to be a modern-day Robin Hood of information freedom.  For the millions of homeowners who are stuck in underwater, predatory loans while Bank of America took public bailouts and is now handing out (once again) record bonuses, justice WikiLeaks-style can’t come too soon.

By: sallykohn