Wikileaks

2006 saw the formation of what would soon become a world player in journalism. Julian Assange created Wikileaks as a whistle-blower's resource, a place where those with something important to share could do so without retribution and with full anonymity. Information dumps from the United States government, corporations, and even private groups and individuals drew mixed results and painted a strange picture of this organization. Its proponents tout it as returning to journalism's roots, a second Pentagon Papers. Its opponents cite damaged international relations and mass invasions of privacy as grounds to declare this organization anathema. This paper will explore the impact that Mr. Assange has had on the last decade of world development. What has Wikileaks done to garner such ire from its opponents? George Washington (1777) once wrote to Elias Dayton that “upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprizes [sic] of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated.“ Unfortunately, Wikileaks facilitated the release of over half a million documents from the American government, to include hundreds of thousands on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Diplomatic emails released by Assange stirred controversy and saw the international opinion of the States plummet. Some say that these releases spurred change and transparency in the government. Others would argue, successfully, that they changed the methods used to keep the secrets rather than reduce the number of kept secrets at all (Foust, 2010). Releasing the diplomats' cables undermined the entire game of diplomacy. It is a game that requires extreme care be taken in not only word choice, but presentation. How things are said are far more important than many understand. Wikileaks, as the Huffington Post put it, “compromised the fundamental nature of what diplomats