WikiLeaks burst onto the scene on October 4, 2006, with Julian Assange later explaining that its purpose was to give journalists faster access to leaked information and help them report on it more efficiently.
Founding and First Leaks
Inspired by the landmark release of the Pentagon Papers of 1971, Julian Assange registered the WikiLeaks domain name on October 4, 2006. While the site initially ran on servers based in Australia, operations were quickly moved to nations such as Sweden, where legal frameworks offered stronger protections for journalistic activity. The very first document to appear on the platform was a striking one: an assassination order targeting Somali government officials, bearing the signature of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a rebel leader within the country. Over its first 4 years, the site steadily published a wide range of leaked materials connected to financial, military, and government institutions. It was in 2010, however, that WikiLeaks truly exploded into public consciousness — gaining access to a massive collection of documents, photographs, and videos tied to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which sparked enormous media coverage.
The Iraq and Afghanistan War Leaks
Chelsea Manning provided WikiLeaks with its most explosive material, and publication began in 2010. The releases kicked off in February with leaked cables that exposed a dispute involving Iceland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The following month brought a 32-page report produced by the US Department of Defense that specifically addressed WikiLeaks operations and explored possible strategies for countering future leaks. Then in April, a harrowing video surfaced showing US pilots opening fire on employees of the media outlet Reuters, having mistaken their cameras for weapons. A van that pulled up shortly afterward in an effort to collect the bodies and transport them away was also fired upon by US troops. After hacker Adrian Lamo exposed Chelsea Manning's activities to the United States government, WikiLeaks went on to release more than 92,000 additional documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The organization kept publishing leaked materials in the years that followed but didn't capture widespread public attention again until 2016, when DNC emails were released.
DNC Emails and Charges Against Assange
WikiLeaks dropped roughly 20,000 emails and 8,000 files in July of 2016, materials now believed to have been stolen through a Russian "spear-phishing" attack that breached accounts belonging to senior DNC officials, including John Podesta. The leaked correspondence covered a variety of topics, though the emails generating the biggest headlines involved Hilary Clinton delivering paid speeches to banks and receiving DNC debate questions ahead of time. While Clinton was dealing with fallout in the United States, Assange had his own mounting legal troubles in Sweden and the United Kingdom. Two Swedish women had accused him of sexual assault in 2010, and he had secured asylum from the Ecuadorian government — protection he held onto until 2019, when it was revoked. At that point, he was turned over to British authorities and sent to Belmarsh Prison for bail violations, where he remains to this day.