Apparently WikiLeaks Released An E-mail That Included Foodbeast

Well, this is rather interesting.

Following news of the Vault 7 release by Wikileaks, Foodbeast’s Head of Product Rudy uncovered an e-mail on the Wikileaks website that involved us.

The e-mail wasn’t part of the Vault 7 release, since that hasn’t included any emails so far. The e-mail Rudy found was part of an older release from Wikileaks called “Berat’s Box,” which uncovered a trove of emails from Turkey’s Minister of Energy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak.

The message in question appears to be a regular news briefing from Foreign Policy from June 2013. Foodbeast is mentioned within the e-mail thanks to a viral news story regarding Captain Crunch, that apparently made it onto Foreign Policy’s radar:

“*It’s a full-blown Washington scandal: *We are crestfallen at what we are reading today after the Navy responded to the Cap’n Crunch scandal, saying, yeah, that’s right, the Captain is a total poser. */FP’s Michael Peck: /*”After 50 years of purporting to be a naval captain, the imposter was finally unmasked yesterday by an alert fan on culinary site Foodbeast, who pointed out that Crunch is wearing the wrist stripes of a U.S. Navy commander rather than a captain. The scandal quickly blossomed, even garnering Gawker coverage. ‘You are correct that Cap’n Crunch appears to be wearing the rank of a U.S. Navy commander,’ Lt. Cmdr. Sarah Flaherty, a U.S. Navy spokeswoman, tells Foreign Policy. ‘Oddly, our personnel records do not show a ‘Cap’n Crunch’ who currently serves or has served in the Navy.”

This was one of Foodbeast’s most viral stories of all time, even picking up coverage and discussions by CNN and the U.S. Navy.

It’s interesting to see that even a food site like Foodbeast can relate to foreign policy and get noticed by somebody like the Turkish Minister of Energy.