DARPA is mentioned exactly once in this article and then mostly as a tangential point. Despite this, it's mentioned several times in multiple critical top-level comments here in the comment section.
There are many other ridiculous associations in Assange's essay, some of which have been pointed out by others in the thread, but that one jumps out of the page, grabs you by the ears, and screams crazy.
* Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media [1]
* How Covert Agents Infiltrate The Internet To Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations [2]
Poul-Henning Kamp, in a hypothetical talk about his work at the NSA, talks about just this. [3] Here's a quote:
> The idea is to steer discussions in these forums to or from particular topics (...) and disrupt consensus building against our purposes
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...
[2]: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...