Acid Test for Wikileaks founder

By being determined to be on this path,and not to compromise,Ive wound up in an extraordinary situation, Assange said over lunch last Sunday,when he arrived sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises.

In his remarkable journey to notoriety,Assange,founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowers website,sees the next few weeks as his most hazardous. Now he is making his most brazen disclosure yet: 391,832 secret documents on the Iraqi war. He held a news conference in London on Saturday,saying that the release constituted the most comprehensive and detailed account of any war ever to have entered the public record. Twelve weeks ago,he posted on his organisations website some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Much has changed since 2006,when Assange,a 39-year-old Australian,used years of computer hacking and what friends call a near genius IQ to establish WikiLeaks,redefining whistle-blowing 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,and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood.

Several WikiLeaks colleagues say he 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 Icelands 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 has denied the allegations,saying the relations were consensual. But prosecutors in Sweden have yet to formally 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. Though he characterises the claims as a smear campaign, the scandal has compounded the pressures of his cloaked life.

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 realisation dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like, he said over the London lunch.

After the Sweden scandal,strains within WikiLeaks reached a breaking point,with some of Assanges closest collaborators publicly defecting. The New York Times spoke with dozens of people who have worked with and supported him in Iceland,Sweden,Germany,Britain and the US. What emerged was a picture of the founder of WikiLeaks as its prime innovator and charismatic force but as someone whose growing celebrity has been matched by an increasingly dictatorial,eccentric and capricious style.

In an online exchange with one volunteer,a transcript of which was obtained by The Times,he warned that WikiLeaks would disintegrate without him. Weve been in a Unity or Death situation for a few months now, he said.

When Herbert Snorrason,a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland,questioned Assanges judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange last month,Assange was uncompromising. I dont like your tone, he said,according to a transcript. If it continues,youre out.

Assange cast himself as indispensable. I am the heart and soul of this organization,its founder,philosopher,spokesperson,original coder,organiser,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 conclusion was stark. He is not in his right mind, he said. In London,Assange was dismissive of all those who have criticised 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 defections could paralyse an organisation that Assange says has 40 core volunteers and about 800 mostly unpaid followers to maintain a diffuse web of computer servers and to secure the system against attack to guard against the kind of infiltration that WikiLeaks itself has used to generate its revelations.JOHN F. BURNS amp; RAVI SOMAIYA