According to the publication Domain Name Wire, Bank of America (BofA) is buying up hundreds of domain names such as BankofAmericaSucks.com and BrianMoynihanBlows.com. The megabank is prepping for the possible release of damaging information from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange is promising to unleash a cache of secret documents from the hard drive of a big bank executive. In 2009, he told Computer World that the bank was Bank of America. In 2010, he told Forbes it was significant enough to “take down a bank or two.” The New York Times recently reported that BofA is now moving into high gear on damage and spin control tasking dozens of people to a Wikileaks "war room." BofA is already under the gun, defending itself from multiple lawsuits demanding that the bank buy back billions worth of toxic mortgages it peddled to investors. The firm is also at the heart of the robo-signing scandal, having wrongfully kicked many American families to the curb. Assange may have more information on the controversial merger of BofA and Merrill Lynch, which spawned fraud charges. Or he may have more dirt on BofA subsidiary Countrywide. Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo has been the subject of insider-trading charges. Stay tuned and learn more about these scandals in our Sourcewatch profile of America's largest bank.

Citizens of Nash County, North Carolina have hired the Raleigh-based public relations firm Campaign Connections to help stop Sanderson Farms from building a chicken processing plant in their community. Citizens call the slaughtering plant an "industry of yesterday" and say locating the plant in Nash County will make it harder to lure higher-tech businesses to the area, like biotech, pharmaceutical and alternative energy companies. Campaign Connections says citizens sought their help to correct misinformation, like the notion that they oppose bringing jobs to the area. Citizens say they aren't opposed to jobs, or to Sanderson Farms, but feel the company is not a "good match" for their community. As part of a strategy to oppose the plant, some Nash County citizens have bought stock in Sanderson Farms so they can be included in the company's Board of Directors meetings.

Classified State Department cables published by Wikileaks show high-up U.S. government officials have entertained and obliged special requests from foreign heads of state to help close big deals for Boeing. In 2006, a senior Commerce Department official hand-delivered a personal letter from George W. Bush to the office of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, urging the king to complete a deal with Boeing for 43 airliners, including some for the king's family fleet. The cable shows that as part of the deal, the King wanted his personal jet "to have all the technology that his friend, President Bush, had on Air Force One." Once he had his high-tech plane, the King said, "God willing," he would "make a decision that will 'please you very much.' " The U.S. obligingly authorized an upgrade in King Abdullah's plane. In other instances, Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheik Hasina Wazed, sought landing rights at Kennedy International Airport, and the Turkish government asked for assurances that one of their astronauts could join a future NASA space flight. U.S. diplomats served as marketing agents for Boeing by using State Department visits as bargaining chips and offering deals to foreign heads of state and commercial executives with the power to purchase airplanes from Boeing.