Even if it started as an honest attempt to show up secrecy, so many former Wikileaks workers have jumped ship that a completely new direction might have been taken.

It's also possible, and looking probable that the low level Army private was used as a scapegoat. Perhaps this is all a battle for turf among espionage agencies in the US government.

I have no idea, but if you're exposing money and power it is tough to not become about money and power yourself. When they were new, though, I thought their organization made sense given the technology of the day - they were exploiting data from private networks within which there was fairly broad access internally, and there's a very simple outward vector there through whistle-blowers and disgruntled employees. Wikileaks then took that data and through what was effectively a marketing department attempted to expose a broad section of the public to said data.

If, apparently, 3 million military personnel had access to this data, and it is deemed damaging by the government, then this is all to me no more than a demonstration of (very common) non-existent network security on the social side.

you are the media you consume.