Here's the deal, and what the analysis at RLENT's link points out so well. Ultimately, Assange and Wikileaks is not about leaking information, per se, it's about fighting conspiracies.
He has two core assumptions, at least according to the analysis, and it's essentially true, albeit not quite the whole "real game". First is that authoritarian organizations need secrecy to succeed and thrive. Second is that secrecy is a barrier to effective communication. He believes that demonstrating leaks to an authoritarian organization will cause it to increase its secrecy. Pushed far enough, that secrecy makes the organization cumbersome and inflexible, sometimes dysfunctional, allowing opponents to easily get inside its OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). When secrecy is tightened, the number of people who are aware of the secrets must be limited, preventing effective authoritarian conspiracies.
Because the authoritarian organization can longer effectively keep its conspiracies a secret, the end result is that the organization must choose between curbing its authoritarian tendencies or collapse.
And that's what Assange is after, collapse of authoritarian governments. He may say that these leaks will results in a more open government, free of lies, corruption and conspiracies, and a lot of people, including the media, believe it. But he knows better, and a more free and open government is not what he's after.
He's been anti-authority and pro-anarchist for the purposes of anti-authoritarianism for the goal of Utopia for 20 years or more, dating back to his Usenet and hacker days. He believes that society can exist and thrive without authority, and if he can remove much or all of that authority, then all authority will collapse under its own weight of secrets. He's also been anti-United States for probably as long, not because he has any particular beef with the United States exactly, but because the United States is the most powerful, most influential authoritarian organization around, the one with the most secrets and the most conspiracies (because you need those secrets and conspiracies to thrive, and the US has certainly done that). His goal is to remove that authority. Simply, to bring down the United States.
As a hacker (who eventually pled guilty to several charges of breaking into computer networks when he was in his teens) he had his principles, and still maintains them. He and a couple of other guys formed a hacker group called the International Subversives, for which Assanged wrote the rules, rules that most hackers already lived by: Don’t damage computer systems you break into, don’t alter any information in those systems other than the logs to erase your tracks, and share all information obtained from those systems.
In other words, don't do any damage or destroy information, but break in and get the information they don't want you to have, and then make it public. It's a set of rules and principles that should sound familiar today, because it's exactly what Assange and Wikileaks is all about.
In his Usenet days he used several user names, but two main ones. One was Cue Ball, because he viewed himself as the one who starts the game by breaking things up. Everything that gets done on the table, from start to finish, is done with the Cue Ball. That's Assange, in control breaking things up and putting them away. And no matter who wins, it's the Cue Ball that wins the game.
The other screen name, and his primary hacker name, was Mendax, from Splendide Mendax. Mendax means untruthful, deceitful, and liar, and spendide means excellence and brilliant, noble and glorious. So Spendide Mendax was gloriously untruthful, and he saw (and sees) himself as being noble in his deceit, excelling at it in glorious fashion, with the ends absolutely justifying the means.
He has a greater purpose for himself and (in his view) all of mankind, and if it takes lies and deceit to get there, so be it. If the exposing of leaks and damage to conspiracies cost a few lives along the way to a greater good where no lives will be lost because (in his Utopian view) there will be no conspiratorial authority to cause them, he's fine with that.
So whatever of his stuff you may read, or whatever you see him say in an interview, keep in mind that sitting there underneath it all at the foundation is Cue Ball and Mendax.
