Strong disagree. When you make overblown claims that later don't pan out, you do in fact sacrifice credibility. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to restate these ones:

* That Assange was "tailed" on his trip to Iceland because two state department functionaries on their way to a conference shared a flight with him

* That someone was harassed by Iceland for Wikileaks involvement when in fact he was being questioned about having stolen from Wikileaks.

* That Facebook was squelching Wikileaks [thx, jm] when in fact they were replacing an unofficial unaffiliated Wikileaks group with an official one.

I don't know what to think about the Kenyan "assassination attempt" claim, or Gawker's counterclaim, except to tell you that if you told me someone was engaging in political activism in Africa, I wouldn't see an assassination attempt as part of a global conspiracy involving the US, Australia, or Europe.

The balance of your article presumes that governments are in fact threatened by Wikileaks. I don't think they are.