WikiLeaks by Luke Harding, David Leigh Read Free Book Online

information insurgency which was eventually to become celebrated – and execrated – worldwide as WikiLeaks. Assange had a striking and, some critics would say, damaged personality. It was on peacock display in this dating profile, but probably rooted deep in his Australian childhood and youth.
    His obsession with computers, and his compulsion to keep moving, both seemed to have origins in his restless early years. So too, perhaps, did the rumblings from others that Assange was somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Assange would himself joke, when asked if he was autistic: “Aren’t all men?” His dry sense of humour made him attractive – perhaps too attractive – to women. And there was his high analytical intelligence. In a different incarnation,Assange could perhaps have been the successful chief executive of a major corporation.
    There were a few demerits OKCupid couldn’t capture. Assange’s social skills sometimes seemed lacking. The way his eyes flickered around the room was curious; one Guardian journalist described it as “toggling”. And occasionally he forgot to wash. Collaborators who fell out with him – there was to be a long list – accused him of imperiousness and a callous disregard for those of whom he disapproved. Certainly, when crossed, Assange could get very angry indeed, his mood changing as if a switch had been flicked. But in one way the OKCupid profile, last modified in 2006, proved in the end to be dizzyingly accurate. Four years later, in 2010, nobody would be left in any doubt that Assange really did mean, DANGER, ACHTUNG!
    Julian was born on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, in the state of Queensland, in Australia’s sub-tropical north. His mother Christine was the daughter of Warren Hawkins, described by colleagues as a rigid and traditionalist academic who became a college principal; the family settled in Australia from 19th-century Scotland. Julian’s biological father is absent from much of the record: at 17, Christine abruptly left home, selling her paintings to buy a motorcycle, a tent and a map. Some 1,500 miles later she arrived in Sydney and joined its counter-culture scene. According to the book Underground , a revealing docu-novel to which Assange contributed, his mother worked as an artist and fell in love with a rebellious young man she met at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in 1970. He fathered Julian. But the relationship ended and he would apparently play no further role in Assange’s life for many years. They had no contact until after Assange turned 25.
    His father was not forgotten, though. In 2006, at the start of Julian’s remarkable mission to uncover secrets, he registered the wikileaks.org domain name under what is, according to courtrecords, his biological father’s identity – John Shipton. After the birth of her child, Christine moved as a single mother to Magnetic Island, a short ferry ride across the bay from Townsville. Magnetic Island was primitive and bohemian. Its small population included hippies who slept on beaches and in rock caves. The local kids would fish, swim, and play cricket with coconuts. There were koalas, possums, and giant clams. The Great Barrier Reef was nearby, and the islanders were eco-pioneers who grew their own vegetables and helped themselves to what was in the sea – fish, prawns, crabs and crayfish.
    Assange’s mother later recalled, “I rented an island cottage for $12 a week in Picnic Bay … I lived in a bikini, ‘going native’ with my baby and other mums on the island.” She married Brett Assange, an actor and theatre director. The surname apparently derives from Ah Sang, supposedly a 19th-century Chinese settler. Their touring lifestyle was the backdrop to Assange’s early years. His stepfather staged and directed plays, according to Underground , and his mother did the make-up, costumes and set design. She was also a puppeteer.
    In 2010, Assange described his stepfather’s productions as good preparation for