WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

David Leigh, Luke Harding, The Guardian

Faber & Faber, Oct 1, 2013 - Political Science - 304 pages

Published to coincide with the forthcoming film, The Fifth Estate, starring Beneditct Cumberbatch, this tie-in edition contains two new chapters on Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, and a foreword by Alan Rusbridger.

It was the biggest leak in history. WikiLeaks infuriated the world's greatest superpower, embarrassed the British royal family and helped cause a revolution in Africa. The man behind it was Julian Assange, one of the strangest figures ever to become a worldwide celebrity. Was he an internet messiah or a cyber-terrorist? Information freedom fighter or sex criminal? The debate echoed around the globe as US politicians called for his assassination.

And Assange's actions continue to be felt, in the trial of Bradley Manning and the flight of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.

Award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding were at the centre of a unique publishing drama that involved the release of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. (At one point the platinum-haired hacker was hiding from the CIA in David Leigh's London house.) Now, together with the paper's investigative reporting team, Leigh and Harding reveal the startling inside story of the man and the leak, and bring the story dramatically up to date.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Ednsam - LibraryThing

A bit thin in details, but a good overview. Surprising how reporting of rape/consent issues has changed in the past years. Quite disappointed at the discussion of the topic on this book. But interesting to look back now at other changes in attitude given recent events.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - themulhern - LibraryThing

I am definitely interested in the topic but the prose was so ripe and the participles dangled so that I could make no headway w/ this book. Sigh.

About the author

Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and has also covered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He is the author of Mafia State and co-author of WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (nominated for the Orwell Prize) and The Snowden Files. Two of Harding's books have been made into films; The Fifth Estate and Snowden.

Bibliographic information

• Title: WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy
• Authors: David Leigh, Luke Harding, The Guardian
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2013
• ISBN: 1783350180, 9781783350186
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / General; Political Science / International Relations / General; Political Science / Political Process / Political Advocacy