Free WikiLeaks by Luke Harding, David Leigh Page B

Nairobi’s Freedom Park chanted, “Another world is possible!” Organisers were forced to waive entry fees after Nairobi slum dwellers staged a demonstration. The BBC reported that dozens of street children who had been begging for food invaded a five-star hotel tent and feasted on meals meant for sale at $7 a plate when many Kenyans lived on $2 a day: “The hungry urchins were joined by other participants who complained that the food was too expensive and police, caughtunawares, were unable to stop the free-for-all that saw the food containers swept clean.”
    Assange himself spent four days in a WSF tent with his three friends, giving talks, handing out flyers and making connections. He was so exhilarated by what he called “the world’s biggest NGO beach party” that he stayed on for much of the next two years in a Nairobi compound with activists from Médecins Sans Frontières and other foreign groups.
    “I was introduced to senior people in journalism, in human rights very quickly,” he told an Australian interviewer later. “[Kenya] has got extraordinary opportunities for reforms. It had a revolution in the 1970s. It has only been a democracy since 2004.” He wrote that he met in Africa “many committed and courageous individuals – banned opposition groups, corruption investigators, unions, fearless press and clergy”. These brave people seemed like the real deal to him: his mail-out contrasted them witheringly with western fellow-travellers. “A substantial portion of Social Forum types are ineffectual pansies who specialise in making movies about themselves and throwing ‘dialogue’ parties for their friends with foundation money. They … love cameras.”
    Assange cast himself in contrast to these people, as a man of courage. He invoked one of his personal heroes in that WikiLeaks mail-out: “This quote from Solzhenitsyn is increasingly germane: ‘A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the west today. The western world has lost its civic courage … Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites.’” Assange would often pronounce to those around him: “Courage is infectious.”
    It was Kenya that gave WikiLeaks its first journalistic coup. A massive report about the alleged corruption of former president Daniel Arap Moi had been commissioned from the privateinquiry firm Kroll. But his successor, President Mwai Kibaki, who commissioned the report, subsequently failed to release it, allegedly for political reasons. “This report was the holy grail of Kenyan journalism,” Assange later said. “I went there in 2007 and got hold of it.”
    The actual circumstances of publication were more complex. The report was leaked to Mwalimu Mati, head of Mars Group Kenya, an anti-corruption group. “Someone dumped it in our laps,” he says. Mati, prompted by a contact in Germany, had previously registered as a volunteer with WikiLeaks. The fear of retribution made it too dangerous to post the report on the group’s own website: “So we thought: can we not put it on WikiLeaks?” The story appeared simultaneously on 31 August on the front page of the Guardian in London. The full text of the document was posted on WikiLeaks’ website headed, “The missing Kenyan billions”. A press release explained, “WikiLeaks has not yet publicly ‘launched’. We are open only to submissions from journalistic and dissident contacts. However, given the political situation in Kenya we feel we would be remiss to withhold this document any longer.” The site added: “Attribution should be to … ‘Julian A, WikiLeaks’ spokesman’.”
    The result was indeed sensational. There was uproar, and Assange was later to claim that voting shifted 10% in the subsequent Kenyan elections. The following year, his site ran a highly praised report on Kenyan death squads, “The Cry of Blood – Extra-Judicial Killings and