As you no doubt know by now, WikiLeaks founder and international man of mystery (really, just look at this interview on The Colbert Report) Julian Assange, who recently went missing for a month while he was sort of hiding from the U.S. government, sat still long enough to release six years’ worth of classified military documents about Afghanistan on his whistleblower/secret-divulging/government watchdog website.

WikiLeaks, formed by the Australian journalist in January 2007, was catapulted to stardom last April when the site posted a not-so-flattering video of a U.S. military helicopter strike in Iraq that killed nine civilians, including two Reuters reporters. Assange received flak for offering an edited version of the helicopter strike video (that included labels/arrows pointing to civilians) entitled “Collateral Murder.”

The Pentagon has had its eye on the self-proclaimed informer of let-the-people-decide democracy since 2008, when a “secret” report -– which actually ended up being leaked to WikiLeaks –- deemed the website a potential threat to U.S. forces and counterintelligence efforts.

Assange, who started off as a computer hacker, has no permanent home but has close ties with Iceland (which has occasionally served as his secret video-releasing lair and whose local lawmakers have worked with him to develop free-speech laws aimed to protect journalists’ sources).

The release of the Afghanistan documents has created quite the hullabaloo , with journalists acting like this is the first time anybody has ever said that the war is not going so well (while even President Obama admits the documents show nothing new) and ominously questioning what a WikiLeaks-filled future will hold for investigative journalism.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm.