I have mixed feelings about him and WikiLeaks. I do think he's being unfairly persecuted by global governments (though surely he knew this was a likely risk from the start), and they have released information that was in the public interest, but at the same time, the CIA director calling them a "hostile intelligence service" doesn't seem wrong. [0]
In their leaked group chat logs (https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wik...), they behave exactly like a "para-intelligence agency" ("para" as in "paramilitary"). They happily use deceit, trickery, sockpuppetry, trolls, propaganda, and spreading of fear, doubt, and conspiracy theories to achieve their end goals, and their end goals seem to be to push things in a certain direction to achieve particular geopolitical results. Whether or not you agree with Assange's goals, he appears to have a strong "ends justify the means" mentality, much like the militaries and intelligence agencies he's opposing. Their tactics really seem identical to any intelligence agency's, at least from an information and non-kinetic perspective.
And note this was a semi-private group just to talk to their supporters. One can only imagine what their internal, top secret-classified chats and phone calls are like. I suspect those would make them look even worse than they already do, and, again, I bet they would look very similar to the most secretive of CIA meetings.
Maybe it's one of those "die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" situations, or maybe Assange was always like this. I don't know. But they're very far from a journalistic organization, or a "Wiki", or a disinterested distributor of leaked information. They are highly political. Ironically, if they had more power or national backing [1], there would probably be a "WikiLeaks" trying to inform people about them. This sort of thing seems to be a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again in history.
[1] Some claim they work with Russian intelligence or are even backed by Russia, but I think it's more that Russian intelligence just saw them as a useful tool for a particular operation. I don't think any nation backs them.
In their leaked group chat logs (https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wik...), they behave exactly like a "para-intelligence agency" ("para" as in "paramilitary"). They happily use deceit, trickery, sockpuppetry, trolls, propaganda, and spreading of fear, doubt, and conspiracy theories to achieve their end goals, and their end goals seem to be to push things in a certain direction to achieve particular geopolitical results. Whether or not you agree with Assange's goals, he appears to have a strong "ends justify the means" mentality, much like the militaries and intelligence agencies he's opposing. Their tactics really seem identical to any intelligence agency's, at least from an information and non-kinetic perspective.
And note this was a semi-private group just to talk to their supporters. One can only imagine what their internal, top secret-classified chats and phone calls are like. I suspect those would make them look even worse than they already do, and, again, I bet they would look very similar to the most secretive of CIA meetings.
Maybe it's one of those "die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" situations, or maybe Assange was always like this. I don't know. But they're very far from a journalistic organization, or a "Wiki", or a disinterested distributor of leaked information. They are highly political. Ironically, if they had more power or national backing [1], there would probably be a "WikiLeaks" trying to inform people about them. This sort of thing seems to be a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again in history.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/cia-director...
[1] Some claim they work with Russian intelligence or are even backed by Russia, but I think it's more that Russian intelligence just saw them as a useful tool for a particular operation. I don't think any nation backs them.