They were "fleecing" intelligence agencies from a very early stage. Here is old mailing list communication where Assange says as much (besides admitting they pull a lot of leaks when mob and intelligence agencies extract over Tor).

Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:21:34 -0800 To: From: John Young The CIA would be the most likely $5M funder. Soros is suspected of being a conduit for black money to dissident groups racketeering for such payola. Now it may be that that is the intention of WL because its behavior so far fits the pattern. If fleecing the CIA is the purpose, I urge setting a much higher funding goal, in the $100M range and up. The US intel agencies are awash in funds they cannot spend fast enough to keep the Congressional spigot wide open. Academics, dissidents, companies, spy contractors, other nation’s spy agencies, whole countries, are falling over themselves to tap into this bountiful flood. But competition is fierce, and accusations of deception are raging even as the fleecers work in concert. Chinese dissidents — a brand name among many — are already reaping huge benefits from covert funding from the US and from the PRC, along with others in the former Soviets, in Africa and South America, inside the US, UK and Europe, in the Middle East and the Koreas, who know how to double-cross ditzy-rich Dads and Moms. In solidarity to fuck em all.

To: John Young <jya[a t]pipeline.com> From: Wikileaks <wikileaks[a t]wikileaks.org> Subject: martha stuart pgp Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 12:20:25 -0500 —–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—– Version: None J. We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly, but not entirely a feint. Invention abounds. Lies, twists and distorts everywhere needed for protection. Hackers monitor chinese and other intel as they burrow into their targets, when they pull, so do we. Inxhaustible supply of material. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We’re going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new. If fleecing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pullbacks from NED, CFR, Freedomhouse and other CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 afghanistan. Almost all of india fed. Half a dozen foreign ministries. Dozens of political parties and consulates, worldbank, apec, UN sections, trade groups, tibet and fulan dafa associations and… russian phishing mafia who pull data everywhere. We’re drowing. We don’t even know a tenth of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped storing it at 1Tb.