(He’s probably been shunned by the Team, but that’s hard to quantify.)

Just a hypothesis, but it might account for Assange’s odd claim.

Well worth returning to. The hypothesis doesn’t ring true for me though, in that anyone already able to hack into and take control of RealClimate then link to the zip file on a Russian (or any other) server from various sceptic blogs has no need of WikiLeaks.

The attack on Paul Dennis is a different thing – and the singular use of David Leigh as a conduit. Well worth hypothesizing, at every level.

The article has a potential connection to Wikileaks as well. Most people who have written on climategate write more than one article. However, to my knowledge, this was David Leigh’s one and only venture into the climategate fray. Now google “david leigh unsung hero” and he connects to the Wikileaks story. Is it anything other than coincidence? Dunno. A dig-here.

There are other even more interesting aspects to the article, which needs to be parsed paragraph-by-paragraph in light of the suspected Neil Wallis involvement.

We’re still in the dark as to what really happened, but here’s a hypothesis consistent with the facts (I think):

A UEA insider — perhaps an IT person who had a scientific background and Wikileaks contacts but was not in the climate science clique — was inspired by blog controversy and Wikileak successes to leak the e-mails via Wikileaks. However, the Wikileaks server happened to be down at the time he or she was ready to leak, and hence the leaker resorted instead to an insecure Russian server plus a tip on RC (unsuccessful) and then tAV (successful).

Assange could thus take some valid credit for inspiring the leak, even if his organization in fact had no hand in its actual implementation.

UEA then hired Wallis to spin the leak as an outside hack, perhaps by Russian intelligence agents, in order to distract attention away from CRU’s anti-scientific efforts to keep its data secret.

Just a hypothesis, but it might account for Assange’s odd claim.