WikiLeaks Founded
Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks to publish classified and sensitive information
October 04, 2006
A Platform for Secrets
WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian activist and programmer. The platform was designed to allow whistleblowers to anonymously submit confidential documents, which WikiLeaks would then publish for the world to read. Its stated mission was to bring transparency to governments and corporations. Early releases included documents about corruption in Kenya and the operations of a Swiss bank, attracting significant media attention.
The Leaks That Shocked the World
WikiLeaks became globally famous in 2010 when it published a video showing a U.S. military helicopter killing civilians in Baghdad. That same year, it released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military logs from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a large cache of U.S. diplomatic cables. The source of the military leaks, Army soldier Chelsea Manning, was arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison before President Obama commuted the sentence in 2017.
Controversy and Consequences
WikiLeaks and Assange became deeply controversial. Supporters praised the platform for exposing government wrongdoing. Critics argued that publishing unredacted documents put intelligence sources and ordinary people in danger. Assange spent years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London avoiding extradition before being arrested in 2019. He faced U.S. espionage charges and spent years in a British prison. The saga raised fundamental questions about press freedom, national security, and the ethics of publishing classified material. Use our date calculator to explore WikiLeaks' timeline.