KEITH NEWBERY Vital role being played by the WikiLeaks team

The truth may then get an opportunity to emerge through the murk of claim, counter-claim, rumour and spin which has always surrounded this odd little man and his mission to reveal.

Until then we must reach our own conclusions about someone who has got every powerbroker from the White House to the inner sanctum of News International all of a fidget.

We must leave the courts to decide about the sexual offences Assange is alleged to have committed in Sweden and whether, as he says, they are part of a vast conspiracy to discredit him.

Once thing is certain, however. Every opportunity – ranging from the petty to the downright peculiar – has been taken to insult and diminish him.

He has been variously described as ‘rather smelly’ and (possibly even more hurtful) ‘looking like David Davis’s anaemic little brother.’

Yet the more he is traduced the higher his stock rises because people want to know why anyone would go to all that trouble to destroy a man’s reputation unless he represented a genuine danger to them.

One can almost picture the icy glower on Gordon Brown’s face when he read the WikiLeak revelation that his government had conspired in the release of Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The news will have added a few more rips and tears to the shreds of Brown’s tattered reputation for straight talking.

You will recall that time after time, when questioned about the killer’s release in the Commons, on the questionable grounds of terminal illness, he quickly shifted total responsibility for the decision on to the Scottish parliament.

It was nothing to do with him, guv, and it was certainly nothing to do with keeping the Libyans sweet on oil deals.

However, we now learn that one of his own Foreign Office ministers actually provided Libyan officials with detailed legal advice on how to use al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from his Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.

The truth will have twisted another rusty knife into the wounds of those who lost loved ones at Lockerbie.

And the survival of WikiLeaks as a means of keeping politicians even half honest suddenly becomes even more important.