Last week, Julian Assange – founder of controversial news site WikiLeaks – was accused of rape. Although the charges were dropped just hours later, a quote from Assange via Al-Jazeera claimed that the allegations were part of a “smear campaign” against him.

This of course comes off the back of the flak the site drew just a short time before for their releasing over 70,000 secret military documents regarding the war in Afghanistan with 15,000 “more explosive” files left to reveal. Assange has stated on his Twitter account that he feels certain agencies including the Pentagon are trying to prevent this and are using “dirty tricks” to do so.

Although Assange stopped short of naming any agencies directly in his quote, he did imply that these agencies would have something to gain from his name being besmirched. He stated: ‘We can have some suspicions about who would benefit, but without direct evidence I would not be willing to make a direct allegation’.

Whether or not the agencies WikiLeaks has angered over the period of its existence – particularly with the Afghan documents – are firing back with PR warfare, it’s certainly not a story which seems like it’s going to go away in the immediate future.