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by indubitable 3161 days ago
Again, I feel I am asking a very simple and reasonable question. You suggested that Wikileaks 'might' (and your phrasing is more akin to are) be witholding valuable and condemning information on Trump.

I'm just asking why you think this and in particular why our hypothetical leaker would not simply contact another organization for publication if Wikileaks failed to do so? Many of the biggest leaks in recent times have not come from Wikileaks. The Panama Papers were published by Süddeutsche Zeitung. Snowden's NSA and global surveillance leaks were brought to the public attention through contact with Glenn Greenwald.

I'd actually even take this a step further. Wikileaks is under an implicit, but mandatory, obligation to publish such materials if they were given them. Imagine our leaker did simply take the materials to e.g. Glenn Greenwald and published our hypothetical groundbreaking leaks. A condition of said leaks could also be publication of the fact that they were provided to Wikileaks who chose to not publish them. That would, overnight, destroy Wikileaks as an organization.

1 comments

Exactly. You are thinking of this logically while most of the people accusing Wikileaks of acting deliberately on Trump's behalf do not pay close attention to Wikileaks or understand its obvious journalistic motivations.

The minute anyone can prove that WL withheld anything newsworthy to suit its own political goals, WL is done. This has not happened. Further, anyone who leaked something big about Trump to WL (such as his taxes) would clearly want to see them exposed, and would not sit by and wait for Trump to win while the damning materials went unpublished.