The material WikiLeaks published between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of international attention,
[83] but after it began publishing documents supplied by U.S. Army
intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks became a household name.
In April 2010, Wikileaks released the
Collateral Murder video,
[5] which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq, including
Reuters journalists
Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant
Saeed Chmagh.
[6] Reuters had previously made a request to the US government for the
Collateral Murder video under
Freedom of Information but had been denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military's encryption of the video.
[84][85]
In October 2010, Wikileaks published the
Iraq War logs, a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports from the Iraq War covering the period from 2004 to 2009.
[86] Assange said that he hoped the publication would "correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued after the war".
[87] Regarding his own role within Wikileaks he said "We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod … to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand. I get undue credit".
[88]
Other Manning material published by Wikileaks included the
Afghanistan War logs in July 2010,
[89] and the
Guantánamo Bay files in April 2011.
[90]
Wikileaks published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables,
[91] known as the
"Cablegate" files, in November 2010. Wikileaks initially worked with established Western media organisations, and later with smaller regional media organisations, while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based.
[92][93] The files showed United States espionage against United Nations and other world leaders,
[94][95][96] revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by U.S. diplomats, helping to spark the
Arab Spring.
[97][98] The Cablegate and Iraq and Afghan War releases impacted diplomacy and public opinion globally, with responses varying by region.
[93]