WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: what actually happened, without the mythology

Timeline both sides accept

• 2006: WikiLeaks launches as a platform for publishing classified and restricted documents from anonymous sources.
• 2010: the year that made it famous — the Collateral Murder video (April), the Afghan War Diary (July), the Iraq War Logs (October), and Cablegate: a quarter-million US diplomatic cables published with The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El País (November). Source: analyst Chelsea Manning, later court-martialled.
• 2012–2019: Assange lives inside Ecuador's London embassy under asylum; in 2019 Ecuador withdraws it and British police arrest him.
• 2019–2024: Assange fights US extradition from a London prison while press-freedom groups warn the Espionage Act charges criminalise journalism itself, and governments argue the unredacted releases endangered named sources.
• June 2024: a plea deal — guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information — ends the standoff. Assange walks free and returns to Australia.

Why this page is neutral

Assange is simultaneously a press-freedom award winner and a convicted felon; a transparency hero to some governments' critics and a reckless actor to several governments. This site takes no position on that debate. What matters for our readers is the mechanism the saga demonstrated: in the digital age, one insider with access can move history's raw material — and one publisher can force every citizen to decide what secrecy is legitimate.

Read the primary material through established news archives and court records, not through memes. And when anyone forwards you a "leaked list", remember the lesson of our Epstein-records guide: verify against primary sources before you believe — or share — anything.