A full decade of admirable work - An anniversary for Wikileaks

THOUGH it’s more than 42 years since Richard Nixon was forced to resign as American president — August 9, 1974 — that denouement remains the high-water mark of investigative journalism. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, through The Washington Post and with the help of a mole — identified 30 years later as FBI executive William Mark Felt — defeated the most powerful office in the world.

As Wikileaks, the whistleblower organisation, celebrates its tenth anniversary it cannot yet claim such a lustrous scalp but it can only be a matter of time. Wikileaks operates on a far broader canvas, it focuses on organisations and governments, their foibles and corruptions. This evolution has been facilitated by the internet’s all-seeing presence. Without it Wikileaks would not be a new player in foreign policy or politics ... nor would it have so many enemies.

The position of Julian Assange, the organisation’s editor-in-chief, confirms that. He has lived in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since August 2012 because he fears, ultimately, that he will be extradited to America because of this apparent role in publishing secret American documents.