PR Pros Argue BofA Needs to Play WikiLeaks Defense

Wrigley says the comic's strategy was a success. "People ended up feeling sorry for Letterman," she notes.

While Wrigley concedes she can't think of an example of a "starched and pressed company," doing something similar, she isn't convinced it would be a mistake. "People say well, it's just entertainment but we're talking about somebody who's worth a lot of money and whose brand is worth a lot of money," she says of the late night host.

In this instance, however, Bank of America does not appear to know what information Wikileaks has. If that is the case, its apparent strategy to watch and wait may make more sense, says Eric Dezenhall, head of crisis communications firm Dezenhall Resources and author of Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management is Wrong.

"Unfortunately, there is the tendency in damage control situations to try to preempt something when you really don't know what the data show, so the better of your bad options is to try to see what the data show before you respond, with the understanding that nowadays whenever there is a crisis there is a 100% chance it will declared to have been mismanaged," Dezenhall says.

Bank of America does not appear to be sitting on its hands entirely. Fox News's Charlie Gasparino reported last week that Bank of America has created a "War Room," which is preparing to deal with the WikiLeaks fallout. The bank is preparing for attacks on three fronts.

The first is potential issues with its origination of mortgage backed securities (MBS), Gasparino reported. Several banks, including JPMorgan Chase(JPM), Goldman Sachs(JPM), Morgan Stanley(MS) and Citigroup(C) are each thought to face billions in exposure related to mortgage securities they packaged and sold. However, Bank of America is the most vulnerable to such putbacks, according to a report by Compass Point Research & Trading, which estimates they will cost the bank some $30 billion.

Another area Gasparino says the bank is guarding against is a potential revelation about mortgages underwritten by Countrywide Mortgage, which Bank of America acquired in 2008. Like JPMorgan and Wells Fargo(WFC), Bank of America has proved vulnerable in recent weeks to selloffs on investor concerns over sloppy paperwork related to its mortgage underwriting and foreclosure practices.