Julian Paul Assange ( ; '' né '' Hawkins ; 3 July 1971 ) is an Australian editor , publisher and investigative journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006 . WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning . These leaks included the '' Collateral Murder '' video ( April 2010 ) , the Afghanistan war logs ( July 2010 ) , the Iraq war logs ( October 2010 ) , and CableGate ( November 2010 ) . After the 2010 leaks , the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks
Collateral Murder
July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike
Julian Assange