Via ANCAPS: WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

Guardian Books today published WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, the first full-length biography of the strange and elusive character behind one of the biggest leaks in history.

Written by the journalists who forged an unprecedented deal between a gifted computer hacker and three of the world's major newspapers, it tells a story from the inside that reads like a thriller.

The authors, award-winning journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, give a riveting account of what Vanity Fair described as 'one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years'.

Leigh said: "This book will bring you as close to the unvarnished truth as you're likely to get."

The book reveals for the first time:

• How a secret deal was constructed in a Belgian hotel to defy the world's biggest superpower, and release an unstoppable flood of military and diplomatic files through the pages of the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel.

• That Assange was so nervous about the CIA that he disguised himself as an old woman in a wig to travel to Ellingham Hall, the stately home in Norfolk from which he launched the US state department cables on the world.

• The extraordinary truth about Assange's childhood. His mother met his real father on a Vietnam war demo in Sydney, Australia, in 1970. But Assange never knew him until the age of 27. His mother Christine later married a touring puppet theatre owner Brett Assange. But Assange used his real father's name as a front to register the WikiLeaks website. Assange's father's identity was unknown until the Guardian got Australian court files released for this book.

• Assange initially rejected pleas to redact documents to protect sources. At an early meeting with international reporters in a restaurant he told them: " 'Well, they're informants,' he said. 'So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.' There was, for a moment, silence around the table."

• The real reason Assange quarrelled with the Guardian's star reporter Nick Davies. Assange promised an exclusive deal, then gave away the paper'ssecrets to rivals. Davies: "I felt betrayed".

• Assange's acrimonious row with the New York Times. "They must be punished!" he declared, and tried to freeze them out of the cables deal. He also threatened to sue the Guardian, for helping the New York Times.

• How Assange paid a controversial figure, Israel Shamir, €2,000 to be WikiLeaks' representative in Russia, according to documents, and gave him sensitive cables.

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Via ANCAPS: WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

Via ANCAPS: WIKILEAKS: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

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