I’m sure journalism, publicity and something approaching legitimacy was taken into consideration by Assange, but if he’s half the strategic thinker that his press makes him out to be, it undoubtedly didn’t escape him that he was putting together a press shield in the major countries victimized by the leaks and if the newspapers didn’t protect him from charges, they’d at least provide lawyers.

By not linking and absolving themselves of responsibility for anything reported by Wikileaks which did not make it into their paper, the Times left him pretty exposed.

Because the Times didn’t link and in fact, they drew a line separating their reporting from the document dump on the Wikileaks site, his force field obviously wouldn’t be as strong. As I said before, by working with the Times and the other papers, if he were to be charged with a crime they would have to be prosecuted in tandem, but by selectively reporting and saying that they take no responsibility for the Wikileaks data, Assange is still left standing alone.