WikiLeaks' Julian Assange believes people are out to smear him and his organization. That much seems clear. Today the New York Times' Ravi Somaiya writes a piece that would seem to confirm those suspicions.

The headline today:

Assange Complains of Jewish Smear Campaign

The issue here is what an editor at the British magazine Private Eye says Assange told him--that there is, in the Times' words, "a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear his organization."

There's no way for the Times to verify this information, as Glenn Greenwald points out at Salon. So why the definitive-sounding headline?

And the background to Assange's "rambling phone call" raises more questions about the Times story.  The paper reports that Assange

was especially angry about a Private Eye report that Israel Shamir, an Assange associate in Russia, was a Holocaust denier. Mr. Assange complained that the article was part of a campaign by Jewish reporters in London to smear WikiLeaks.

That makes it sound like:

a) Assange has some formal association with Israel Shamir, a Holocaust denier;

b) Assange is angry that this magazine reported that Israel Shamir is a Holocaust denier.

But Assange's anger actually seems to stem from the suggestion that he has a formal relationship with Shamir. As a WikiLeaks statement put it:

Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any manner, whatsoever. He has never written for WikiLeaks or any associated organization, under any name and we have no plan that he do so. He is not an "agent" of WikiLeaks. He has never been an employee of WikiLeaks and has never received monies from WikiLeaks or given monies to WikiLeaks or any related organization or individual. However, he has worked for the BBC, Haaretz and many other reputable organizations.

WikiLeaks went on to say that "Shamir was able to search through a limited portion of the cables with a view to writing articles for a range of Russian media." It's possible that WikiLeaks is downplaying Shamir's role; other accounts portray him as having a somewhat closer connection to the organization. But Assange's and WikiLeaks' public pronouncements take issue with the linking of themselves to Shamir, not the exposure of his anti-Semitism (which seems to be quite real).

You get a very different impression from the headline and thrust of the Times piece, which would lead you to believe that Assange consorts with anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, gets angry when they are exposed as such and alleges that a Jewish conspiracy is out to get him.

It's clear that Assange does believe that people are out to spread misinformation about him and his group. The Times story won't do much to convince him that he's wrong.

The long 60 Minutes segment on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange from last night (1/30/11) is definitely worth a look. But this set-up from correspondent Steve Kroft was certainly odd:

Julian Assange is not your average journalist or publisher, and some have argued that he is not really a journalist at all. He is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views. He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.

Assange believes the government keeps important secrets? And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.

Joe Biden on Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak (PBS NewsHour, 1/27/11):

 I would not refer to him as a dictator.

 On WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (NBC's Meet the Press, 12/19/10)

 DAVID GREGORY: Mitch McConnell says he's a high-tech terrorist, others say this is akin to the Pentagon Papers. Where do you come down?

 JOE BIDEN: I would argue that it's closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.

For the record, neither journalist pushed Biden to explain his opinions.

If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in "freedom" stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He's the one who should be in jail.
--Joe Klein, Swampland (12/1/10)

Actually, Julian Assange didn't leak anything--he can't, because he didn't have access to classified documents. Someone (or someones) who did have such access leaked those documents to Assange's WikiLeaks, which, as a journalistic organization, made them available to the world, both directly and through other media partners.

This distinction, which is widely ignored in commentary on WikiLeaks, is actually quite important, because the ethical obligations of a government official with a security clearance are quite different from those of a media outlet. An official makes a promise to protect classified information, and should break that promise only when the duty to keep one's promises is outweighed by the public interest in disclosing wrongdoing. Journalists, on the other hand, are not in the business of protecting secrets, and should have a general presumption in favor of informing the public unless disclosure would cause specific foreseeable harms. The two ethical situations are pretty much opposite.

To treat Assange as a leaker when he is, in fact, a journalist is not only morally confusing, it's quite dangerous to journalists in general. If the government can declare Assange to be spy or a terrorist because he's published classified documents he's received, every investigative journalist who does the same thing is in deep trouble.