What Does WikiLeaks Have?

The many people who stayed awake until the wee hours of Tuesday morning in anticipation of Julian Assange’s “October surprise” were left disappointed as his special online press conference turned out to be largely a retrospective on WikiLeak’s 10-year anniversary.

Hype over the conference had reached epic proportions by the time Assange appeared in front of a camera in Berlin Tuesday morning. The conference was initially scheduled to be held from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but changed to closed video-link conference in Berlin over apparent security concerns.

“We will begin the first publication in that series this week.”

This only increased speculation that Assange would divulge damaging information somehow related to the U.S. elections. “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done,” tweeted Trump surrogate Roger Stone. But alas, no new secrets were exposed.

Anticipation over Assange’s “October surprise” has been building since he first teased new revelations in an interview with Megyn Kelly in August following the WikiLeaks release of thousands of Democrat National Committee emails in July. Indeed, the DNC email dump came with no fanfare nor hints of a “July surprise,” which, along with Assange’s repeated hints, led many to believe would release earth-shattering information on Tuesday.

“We have a lot of pages of material, thousands of pages of material,” Assange promised Kelly. “So, while I have not read every single page, in doing that, I didn’t want to give the game away. But there’s a variety of different types of documents from different types of institutions that are associated with the election campaign, some quite unexpected angles that are, you know, quite interesting, some even entertaining,” he continued.

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In the first week of September, Assange again teased the “October surprise” in an interview with Sean Hannity. “The first batch is coming reasonably soon,” Assange told the Fox News host. “We’re quite confident about it now. We might put out some teasers as early as next week or the week after,” he said. Those teasers never came.

The intense hype followed by intense disappointment has fueled speculation over what information Assange and his organization may actually have — and left people wondering if he has anything at all. Indeed, some are asserting that Assange pulled a “Trump” on unsuspecting journalists, in much the same way as the GOP candidate’s special announcement on Obama’s birth certificate.

Such a theory isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem. Between August, when Assange first teased his “October surprise,” and today, both the website DCLeaks and the hacker Guccifer have released batches of damaging Clinton or Clinton-related emails. It is entirely possible that these leaks contained emails also in the possession of WikiLeaks, and that Assange turned what would have been an obvious anti-climax into a marketing opportunity for WikiLeaks’ anniversary.

But despite what could be remembered forever as Assange’s October disappointment, the WikiLeaks founder continues to promise that more election-related leaks, as well as other damaging leaks, are coming.

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“The upcoming series includes significant material about war, arms, and oil on the U.S. election and on mass surveillance,” said Assange. “We will begin the first publication in that series this week, I am not going to specify the hour,” he added, but assured that any date pertaining to the U.S. elections would be released before Election Day. “We have on a schedule … all the U.S. election data to come out before Nov. 8,” Assange said.

Assange also promised to expose information with the potential to damage at least three governments. “The material that WikiLeaks is going to publish before the end of the year is of … a very significant moment in different directions, affecting three powerful organizations in three different states as well as … the U.S. election process,” he said.