Fearing WikiLeaks dump, Bank of America digs for dirt on itself

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange recently confirmed that Bank of America will be his next target -- so it's not surprising that the nation's largest bank is now in damage-control mode. Still, the megabank's methods are a bit unorthodox. Instead of trying to frantically pin culpability elsewhere in the great chain of financial dealing, BofA executives are actually digging for dirt on the bank's own operations, the New York Times reports. That way, the reasoning goes, the bank's messaging team will be better positioned to spin any damaging revelations that surface from WikiLeaks.

The Times reports that a team of 15 to 20 top officials led by the bank's chief risk officer "has been overseeing a broad internal investigation — scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public, reviewing every case where a computer has gone missing and hunting for any sign that its systems might have been compromised." BofA has hired consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to "help manage the review," the Times says, and "has also sought advice from several top law firms about legal problems that could arise from a disclosure, including the bank's potential liability if private information was disclosed about clients."

The team of spinmeisters can take comfort in one reflection: It's unlikely that BofA's internal investigators will turn up anything more embarrassing than that rogue video of a company exec repurposing a U2 hit into a corporate propaganda song.