The second paragraph suggests that Julian Assange is just a lightning-rod, to deflect attention from the real work. Or at least is entirely replaceable. This may be true, any thought?
But even if you're leaking to a potentially untrustworthy wikileaks clone, there's technologies that can make it possible. (anonymous remailers, tor (combined with other web anonymizing tech), etc) As more people get used to how the internet works it'll become easier for potential leakers to trust those types of sources.
In other words: it's a bit of hassle to replace him outright. His replacement might be a decentralized system of some sort.
If (as I suspect) the technology to do what Assange did was available 10 years ago, that is evidence that if Assange had not acted then it might have take a lot longer for someone else to do what he did.