Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks became a major conduit for secret information after publishing material tied to the 2009–2010 Icelandic financial collapse, Swiss banking tax evasion, Kenyan government corruption, toxic-waste dumping, and later U.S. military and diplomatic operations. The organization released the “Collateral Murder” video, Iraq War documents, Afghanistan War documents, and U.S. diplomatic cables. The film attributes the military disclosures to Chelsea Manning, who passed roughly 500,000 classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, according to journalist Chris Hedges’s account cited in the source. Adrian Lamo’s communications with Manning and his subsequent disclosure of Manning to the FBI became a pivotal part of the case.
The publication campaign produced an enduring conflict between transparency advocates and national-security authorities over whether WikiLeaks functioned as a legitimate publisher or an unsafe distributor of classified material. The source also describes accusations of sexual assault against Julian Assange and an alleged U.S. sealed indictment, while noting that the indictment claim rested on a boastful 2011 leaked email and lacked corroborating evidence. Alex Gibney’s 2013 documentary became part of that dispute: WikiLeaks accused it of dozens of factual errors, while Gibney said WikiLeaks circulated an incomplete transcript. The controversy continued when Netflix began streaming the film in October 2021.
