Ex-WikiLeaker: Site's Defectors Now Control Leaks

Assange 'couldn't be trusted to protect sources'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 10, 2011 1:40 AM CST
Ex-WikiLeaker: Site's Defectors Now Control Leaks
Daniel Domscheit-Berg speaks during a news conference in Davos, Switzerland last month.   (AP Photo/Greenpeace/Markus Forte, Handout)

Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg says he and other defectors took control of the site's submissions system with them when they left the organization last year. The defectors, who also hold some leaked material, believed boss Julian Assange couldn't be trusted to protect the site's sources, said Domscheit-Berg, author of a book on Assange and WikiLeaks.

"Children shouldn’t play with guns,” Domscheit-Berg writes. “We decided to take away these dangerous toys so that Julian could not do harm to anyone else. We were and are primarily bound to our duty vis-à-vis our sources’ security.” Domscheit-Berg—who helped found rival whistleblower site OpenLeaks—says his former boss is "free-thinking" and "brilliant," but also “paranoid, power-obsessed and monomaniacal," reports Forbes.
(More Julian Assange stories.)

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