BOY - Critic

The New Yorker’s George Packer calls him “super-secretive, thin-skinned, [and] megaloma-
niacal.” Sarah Palin claims he’s “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands” whom we
should pursue “with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” Meanwhile, he is
the darling of left-leaning believers everywhere, revered for democratizing the media. Whether
his actions are to be encouraged or vilified, one thing’s for sure: Julian Assange and Wikileaks
have had a huge impact. CHARLOTTE GREENFIELD reports on the effects of the Wikileaks, from
alleged security threats, to how the leaks might change politics.
Last year a political storm appeared on the horizon of journalism
thanks to the work of three newspapers, one website, an unidentifiable
number of hackers and leakers, and a man with eerily snow-white hair.
Julian Assange, the public face of Wikileaks, is not by any means the
first to leak information that scandalised the world. Even the name of
Wikileaks’ most recent initiative - ‘Cablegate’ – is a reference to one of
the most famous leaks in history. In 1972 reporters Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein uncovered the White House’s cover-up of an attempted
break in at the opposing Democratic Party’s headquarters. President
Nixon was forced to resign and, as noted by the film Frost/Nixon, “his
most lasting legacy is that today any political wrong doing is immediately
given the suffix ‘-gate’.”
The first Wikileak had a very different beginning. It all started with
Kenya. In 2007 Wikileaks released a secret report detailing corruption
by the former President, Arap Moi. The subsequent President, Mwai
Kibaki, had commissioned the report in 2004 to gain leverage over
Moi but the two were now working in coalition and the report became
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Wikileaks Features
Wikileaks;
Freedom, Law and Politics
“the holy grail of Kenyan journalism” with no chance of its release. That
is, until Julian Assange’s sources managed to provide Wikileaks with a
copy which they handed on to The Guardian. The result, says Assange,
“changed the result of the election.” “So your leak substantially
changed the world,” prompted a sympathetic interviewer. Assange
responded with a smirking nod.
This leak did change the world, very much so for the citizens of
Kenya. However Assange conveniently fails to add that the result of
that election was violence and ethnic purges throughout Kenya, leaving
nearly 1000 dead. Political tension had existed in Kenya for years and
the leak cannot be blamed for such a result. But it does demonstrate
that even Assange, who pushes bolshily for transparency, must choose
what to omit, what to leave unsaid or unleaked.
Over the following three years, Wikileaks continued leaking but
began to shift its focus to encompass the West. This was consolidated
with a vengeance in 2010, the year Wikileaks forced itself into the
limelight on an exceptional scale. First came a US Defense Depart-