See, that's exactly why mud-slinging is so successful. People have no clue if there was ever an iota of truth in the rape accusations, still Assange's image is now forever tainted by it. It's 'How to destroy your enemies 101'.
It's kind of like saying "US Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192677) and then blaming the subsequent erosion of your credibility on US intelligence. It doesn't matter if it was ever true or if you have any actual evidence, so long as you have good story that appeals to your audience. Insinuation and paranoiac fantasy (wherein absence of evidence can be cited as evidence) take over from there.
Reminds me of an old political joke, "They framed a guilty man!"
Conspiracies and poor behavior are not mutually exclusive.
I know how much you want to believe, but wanting to believe is not going to make it so. At the end of the day, Wikileaks has to be about more than personalities if it is going to succeed, conspiracies or not.
Put differently, you can only frame a person who has made himself the image of the organization. Wikileaks should have never allowed Assange in this position.
So fix the error and move on. No harm, no foul. The only damage to Wikileaks occurs if they sit around and do nothing except for form a circular firing squad.
In today's media environment you probably need a singular spokesperson as a front for interviews etc. You won't get the same amount of attention by just being an anonymous "hivemind".
Also, it's very interesting how the media has turned on wikileaks in the recent past. It's not about how many Pakistanis or Afghans the CIA drones are killing per day, it's about whether wikileaks endangers any sources.
