WikiLeaks’ chief on run, under fire

Critics rap Assange’s focus, conduct

— Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London’s rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears.

He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cell phones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.

“By being determined to be on this path and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” Assange, 39, said over lunch last Sunday.

Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowers’ website, sees the next few weeks as his most hazardous. His site has just made his biggest disclosure yet: 391,832 secret documents on the Iraq war. Twelve weeks earlier, he posted on his organization’s website some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Much has changed since 2006, when Assange, an Australian, used years of computer hacking and what friends call a near-genius IQ to establish WikiLeaks, redefining whistleblowing by gathering secrets in bulk, storing them beyond the reach of governments and others determined to retrieve them, then releasing them instantly and globally.

Now it is not just governments that denounce him: Some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior.

Several WikiLeaks colleagues say Assange alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for NATO troops. “We were very, very upset with that and with the way he spoke about it afterwards,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a core WikiLeaks volunteer and a member of Iceland’s parliament. “If he could just focus on the important things he does, it would be better.”

He is also being investigated in connection with accusations of rape and molestation involving two Swedish women. Assange denied the allegations, saying the relations were consensual. But prosecutors in Sweden have yet toformally approve charges or dismiss the case eight weeks after the complaints against Assange were filed, damaging his quest for a secure base for himself and WikiLeaks.

“When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like,” he said over the London lunch.

Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed a 1,000-page secret study of the Vietnam War in 1971 that became known as the Pentagon Papers, said he saw kindred spirits in Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former Army intelligence operativeunder detention in Quantico, Va., suspected of leaking the Iraq and Afghan documents.

“They were willing to go to prison for life, or be executed, to put out this information,” Ellsberg said.

Underlying Assange’s anxieties is deep uncertainty about what the United States and its allies may do next. Pentagon and Justice department officials have said they are weighing his actions under the 1917 Espionage Act. They have demanded that Assange “return” all government documents in his possession, undertake not to publish any new ones and not “solicit” further U.S. materials.

Assange has responded by going on the run, but has found no refuge. Amid the Afghan documents scandal, he flew to Sweden, seeking a residence permit and protection under that country’s broad press freedoms.

Effectively, as Assange pursues his fugitive’s life, his leadership is enforced over the Internet. Even remotely, his style is described as imperious.

When Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland, questioned Assange’s judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange last month, Assange was uncompromising. “I don’t like your tone,” he said, according to a transcript. “If it continues, you’re out.”

Assange cast himself as indispensable. “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest,” he said. “If you have a problem with me,” he told Snorrason, using an expletive, he should quit.

In an interview about the exchange, Snorrasons concluded, “He is not in his right mind.” In London, Assange was dismissive of all those who have criticized him. “These are not consequential people,” he said.

“About a dozen” disillusioned volunteers have left recently, said Smari McCarthy, an Icelandic volunteer who has distanced himself in the recent turmoil. In late summer, Assange suspended Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German who had been the WikiLeaks spokesman under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, accusing him of unspecified “bad behavior.” Many more activists, McCarthy said, are likely to follow.

Assange denied that any important volunteers had quit, apart from Domscheit-Berg. But further departures could paralyze an organization that Assange says has 40 core volunteers and about 800 mostly unpaid followers to maintain a diffuse web of computer servers and secure the system against attack - to guard against the kind of infiltration that WikiLeaks itself has used to generate its revelations.

Assange’s detractors also accuse him of pursuing a vendetta against the United States. In London, Assange said America was an increasingly militarized society and a threat to democracy. Moreover, he said, “we have been attacked by the United States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves.”

Even among those challenging Assange’s leadership style, there is recognition thatthe intricate computer and financial architecture WikiLeaks uses to shield it against its enemies has depended on its founder. “He’s very unique and extremely capable,” said Jonsdottir, the Icelandic lawmaker.

Information for this article was contributed from Washington by Eric Schmitt and from Kabul by Dexter Filkins of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 15 on 10/24/2010

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