WikiLeaks

Published to coincide with the forthcoming film, The Fifth Estate, starring Benedict 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.

About the Authors

David Leigh is a journalist, author, editor, and Anthony Sampson Professor of Reporting in the journalism department at City University London. He has been a prominent investigative journalist since the 1970s and is currently investigations editor of the Guardian. He was educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968. He was a journalist for the Scotsman, Times, and Guardian (UK) and a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post in 1980. From 1980, he was chief investigative reporter at the Observer.

Luke Harding is the Guardian's Moscow correspondent. He was previously the Guardian's South Asia correspondent in New Delhi and has reported for the paper from Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Mafia State.