Assange again drew fire from U.S. officials after the release of approximately 250,000 diplomatic cables in November 2010. The White House called the release a “reckless and dangerous action.”13 Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to the leak as “an attack against the international community.”14 The international community and the American public were less sure of what to make of the one-time hacker who facilitated the mass leaks. The New York Times wrote, “The Russians seemed to take a special delight in tweaking Washington over its reaction to the leaks, suggesting that the Americans were being hypocritical.” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the U.S. response. “You know, out in the countryside, we have a saying, ‘Someone else’s cow may moo, but yours should keep quiet,’” Putin said, using a Russian proverb The New York Times described as roughly equivalent to “the pot calling the kettle black.”15 Meanwhile, Assange won TIME’s reader’s choice for Person of the Year in 2010, but lost Person of the Year to Mark Zuckerberg.16
WikiLeaks worked with a number of media organizations during these leaks. As executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller wrote he “would hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism” in an article in January 2011 detailing his dealings with Assange. Keller wrote, “We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda.”17 This was not the first time—and wouldn’t be the last time—the site’s founder would be accused of having an agenda. WikiLeaks sprang from Assange’s belief in scientific journalism, an idea he elaborated on in an interview with Raffi Khatchadourian, who was profiling Assange for The New Yorker: I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.18
Assange, however, over time he has strayed far away from the traditional journalistic principle of striving for objectivity, and instead has focused on the idea of justice. Khatchadourian writes, “Assange, despite his claims to scientific journalism, emphasized to me that his mission is to expose injustice, not to provide an even-handed record of events.”19 Assange would later write in his 2014 book When Google Met WikiLeaks, “I looked at something that I had seen going on with the world, which is that I thought there were too many unjust acts. And I wanted there to be more just acts, and fewer unjust acts.”20
It is this very idea that has gotten WikiLeaks into hot water. The site and Assange have been criticized as openly having an agenda while claiming to be a journalistic enterprise. In his column for Slate, author Christopher Hitchens had critical words for the WikiLeaks founder: The man is plainly a micro-megalomaniac with few if any scruples and an undisguised agenda. As I wrote before, when he says that his aim is “to end two wars,” one knows at once what he means by the “ending.” In his fantasies he is probably some kind of guerrilla warrior, but in the real world he is a middle man and peddler who resents the civilization that nurtured him.21
When WikiLeaks held off publication of the DNC emails until just before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks came under renewed criticism for having an agenda, for not being objective, and for straying from its original purpose: “It’s become something else,” John Wonderlich, executive director of the non-profit Sunlight Foundation, told TIME. “It’s not striving for objectivity. It’s more careless. When they publish information it appears to be in service of some specific goal, of retribution, at the expense of the individual.”22
Even those critical of Assange and WikiLeaks, however, have acknowledged the value of some of the site’s revelations. Still, critics worry about the ideological motives behind the operation. German Journalist Jochen Bittner wrote in a February 2016 opinion piece in The New York Times that the “idea behind WikiLeaks is simple, and ingenious.” He continued: Whistleblowers submitted material that proved corruption of the former Kenyan president, tax-avoidance strategies employed by big European banks, and indiscriminate killings of civilians by an American attack helicopter in Iraq. News outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times, helped Mr. Assange spread the scoops. Yet, even back then, observers and media partners felt that Mr. Assange had more in mind than transparency, that there was an ideology behind his idea. Over time, that ideology has become increasingly apparent, through his regular public statements and his stint as a host for a Russian state-controlled TV network.23
In August 2010, just months after the first Manning documents were published, two women accused Assange of rape and sexual assault in Sweden. Assange denies the allegations and he has not been charged. Assange was arrested in London in December and a British court ruled he should be extradited to Sweden, a decision he appealed to the U.K. Supreme Court, which upheld the extradition decision in May 2012. To prevent extradition to Sweden after the sexual assault accusations, Assange went to Ecuador’s embassy in London and appealed for political asylum, a request Ecuador granted in August of 2012. However, since leaving the building would entail his leaving Ecuador’s diplomatic immunity he is effectively residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on house arrest.24 In August 2016, Sweden and Ecuador reached an agreement to interview Assange at the embassy, although the statute of limitations expired on all crimes but the rape allegation.25
Ricardo Patiño, Ecuador’s foreign minister, cited fear of political prosecution as a reason for granting his asylum request. “There are serious indications of retaliation from the country or countries that produced the information published by Mr. Assange; retaliation that could endanger his safety, integrity and even his life,” Patiño said at a news conference.26 Patiño further suggested Assange would not receive a fair trial if extradited to the U.S., adding that it was “not at all improbable he could be subjected to cruel and degrading treatment and sentenced to life imprisonment or even capital punishment.”27
Russia’s connections to Assange and WikiLeaks have been the subject of discussions and internet conspiracy theories, but tangible evidence of a real connection has started to accrue only recently.28 The misgivings about Assange developing an agenda, coinciding with his embassy imprisonment, were drawn in much starker relief when his relationship with the Russians grew closer.
In the Soviet era, all Russian media was considered tainted and ideologically controlled from a central communications authority. Tass, Pravda (Truth!) and the Izvestia distribution networks acted as mouthpieces for the Soviet politburo. Today Putin’s Russia has diversified that portfolio and added BBC-style media of Russia Today to introduce negative propaganda by adopting sloppy Fox News–style reporting (“Some people say…”) to air conspiracy theories or further their anti-US propaganda. For example, “Islamic State operative confesses to receiving funding through US: report.” They then link to and “investigate” unscrupulous or deliberately false news stories from “blogs” or unnamed sources.