While Julian Assange enjoys his first weekend of freedom in years, his wife Stella seems to have no doubts about the family’s priorities.
The WikiLeaks co-founder will need time to recover, she told reporters after the two were reunited in his native Australia. He had previously agreed with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single count: conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.
What comes next is one of the most intriguing questions for anyone who knows how the website he founded in 2006 fundamentally changed whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission?
While the site remains online and potential whistleblowers can theoretically use it to pass on secrets, the organization surrounding it has essentially been repurposed in recent years to campaign for Assange’s release.
Assange himself told Nation magazine in an interview at London’s Belmarsh prison that his imprisonment, US government surveillance and funding restrictions had made it impossible to publish the leaked information.
Other problems are also hard to avoid, not least the fact that the kind of encryption technology and other processes that WikiLeaks in many ways pioneered are now present in every serious news organization.
James Harkin, director of the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism, said interest in WikiLeaks – which he described as a “loose alliance between investigative journalists and information anarchists” – arose more than a decade ago from a deep frustration with the inability of the mainstream media to report on what Western states were really doing in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.
This was one of the reasons why the center offered some of its time and interns to Assange and WikiLeaks – the website had something new in store.
However, he added: “Some of those lessons have now been learned. The kind of cross-border, collaborative investigations of huge volumes of documents that WikiLeaks pioneered and the use of anonymous electronic information repositories are now commonplace – and largely passé.”
“In retrospect, it is remarkable that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the age of ‘disinformation’ – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now been channelled to busybodies and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps we need a new WikiLeaks, given our lukewarm new engagements in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
Another problem for many concerns the society and the alliances that Assange cultivated and forged. Assange is an unpredictable character who has had many falling outs – including with the Guardian. Before he joined the Ecuadorian embassy, he had started hosting interview programs for RT, the Russian state media. At the time, this move was relatively easy to defend, but since the outbreak of the Ukraine war it has taken on a different connotation.
Yet even some Assange critics believe WikiLeaks could play a role, with or without Assange on board.
Journalist and former WikiLeaks employee James Ball said it would be “a smart move” for Assange and WikiLeaks to become a figurehead of transparency activism.
“It’s hard to imagine they can go back to what they were doing before. Originally they were way ahead of their time, but frankly they got sloppy and there was the problem of inexperienced volunteers coming and going and people not being vetted,” he added.
“People around him have said it’s been bad for his health and I’m sure he wants to get some air. So if he wants to live a quiet life, that would be understandable.”
While much of WikiLeaks’ public disclosures focused on Assange’s plight, the website maintained its presence as a platform for disseminating the journalism of others.
Just this week, the account “X” promoted the Gaza Project – a collaboration of journalists from 13 different news organizations investigating the killing of journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Moreover, the impact of the original leaks is still having an impact, both big and small. This week, the right-wing populist Reform Party in the UK dropped one of its election candidates after it was revealed that he was on a list originally leaked to WikiLeaks showing the membership of the far-right British National Party (BNP) in 2016.
Whatever happens, few who knew him expect Assange to spend the rest of his life on an Australian beach.
Stefania Maurizi, a journalist at the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano and WikiLeaks’ media partner since 2009, stressed the “extraordinary resilience and determination” of the organization and its founder.
She said she would understand if Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists wanted to move on, adding: “They have given and sacrificed so much, while he and Stella deserve to enjoy their lives with their children.
“At the same time, WikiLeaks has often been considered dead, as if it had disappeared, and yet it still makes headlines around the world. You can expect anything from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.”
