JA förklarar varför han blir attackerad ad hominem:
JA: Right, so I had a number of reasons for keeping people not completely anonymous, and also for keeping the authority structure of WikiLeaks relatively opaque. But it ended up not being possible for practical reasons, so I have become the lightning rod for the organization. It’s actually quite interesting in trying to get other people to speak for WikiLeaks. We now have Kristinn Hrafnsson, an award-winning Icelandic investigative journalist, who also speaks for the organization.
Ad hominem attacks on the organization are directed at its front men. Yet through this mechanism of attracting attacks, we do keep those attacks away from people who are less able to respond to, deal with, or defend themselves against them. This also creates a sort of market that stems the likelihood of others being swept up into ad hominem attacks—simply because our publishing activities consist of putting out information that cannot be attacked by definition. It is absolutely pristine: there has never been a single allegation that we have got something wrong.
We’re not writing opinion pieces, though we do sometimes write factual analysis, but the bulk of our publication is raw source material that cannot be attacked as something that has our editorial influence in it. So the only way to attack it becomes, in fact, through an ad hominem attack on the message. It’s a very difficult position to be in, but since I’m already in it, I may as well keep the heat on me, and spare the other members of the organization.
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/238