Even as the FBI was conducting its ongoing campaign of surveillance and armed raids against those of us involved in the Anonymous activist collective, that and other "law enforcement" agencies were simultaneously providing resources and work opportunities to a collection of federal contractors, which were themselves engaged in a variety of reckless and unethical activities to which they are now being held to account by the press, if not the government. Anyone who had written up such a situation as fiction would rightfully be thrown out of a publisher's office for having produced a work of fiction with such a ludicrous plot.

On the Saturday before last, an article appeared in Financial Times in which a certain Aaron Barr, head of US federal contractor HBGary Federal, claimed to have identified by name what he termed Anonymous's "leadership". We responded with a press release conceding defeat. The next day, our hackers infiltrated Barr's personal data as well as that of HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary, thereafter releasing tens of thousands of company emails, as well as the very document that Barr had planned to sell to the FBI – a document that turned out to be both hilariously inaccurate and not-so-hilariously destined to get some undetermined number of innocents raided by government agents, despite them not having any connection to Anonymous whatsoever. We then released all of these materials ourselves, and in doing so revealed documents that included plans to collect information on the family members of political opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, as well as a proposal to attack WikiLeaks and key supporter Glenn Greenwald by means of a range of unethical and possibly illegal tactics now being reported by media outlets world wide.

This farrago of embarrassments doesn't end there: shortly after the attack, I spoke to Barr via phone (the conversation is on record), during which the clearance-possessing federal contractor made misleading statements to me about his intentions in collecting information about activists who were meanwhile involved in providing assistance to pro-democracy campaigners in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. Later, as we and reporters went through the acquired emails and other data, we began to discover the full extent of the plans for surveillance and dirty tricks. We were left with an abiding sense of the sickness that plagues institutions that already spend millions on public relations lest they be considered on their merits.

As the story unfolds, Anonymous will continue to conduct the investigation that, in a more perfect world, would be immediately pursued by law enforcement agencies. Anonymous will likewise continue to work with the press and independent observers to reveal the truth of what US taxpayer dollars and corporate "emergency response" funds actually go to produce. Meanwhile, our opponents and antagonists will continue to lie to you. All we ask is that you compare our words and actions with theirs, and decide which of these two factions your conscience would prompt you to support.