Getting the secrets out.

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: Book review

Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website

By Daniel Domscheit-Berg

Crown. 282 pages. $23.

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

ByThe Guardian

Public Affairs. 339 pages. $15.99.

When Julian Assange registered the domain name wikileaks.org, he was a single dad living in Australia. He spent time in the hacker underground in Melbourne and dreamt of a website where secret documents and classified information could be posted safely by whistleblowers. He would go on to publish the biggest leak in the history of journalism: the Afghan War diaries, the Iraq War logs, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Within a few short years, the once anonymous Assange had become a rock star or terrorist, depending upon one's perspective.

But before using the Internet to expose the U.S. government's secrets, Assange used the Internet for a more banal reason: dating.

"WARNING: Want a regular, down to earth guy? Keep moving. I am not the droid you are looking for," his profile on the OKCupid website read. "Passionate, and often pig-headed, activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children, and occasional criminal conspiracy.... I am DANGER, ACHTUNG, and ??????????????!"

The profile, last updated in 2006, shows Assange in full peacock display. Two new books paint a finer portrait of WikiLeaks's controversial leader, and the larger story of WikiLeaks. Both offer insider accounts, though from wildly different perspectives.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, author of Inside WikiLeaks, joined early on and worked side by side with Assange. By 2010, he had grown frustrated with Assange's dictatorial tendencies and with the organization's lack of transparency. Part disgruntled former employee, part true believer in the power of information, and part codependent, Domscheit-Berg writes without too much bitterness, but he does display a naivete that made me cringe at times. His depictions of all-nighters make the WikiLeaks gang seem like a bunch of teenagers. He comes off as a sensitive computer geek who lacks the social skills to match his formidable intellectual abilities.

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Domscheit-Berg covers a lot of ground. He chronicles WikiLeaks's early days and its attacks on Scientology. He discusses how uploading fraternity handbooks online really pissed people off, as did posting secret info about banks in Iceland. WikiLeaks also published other noteworthy Defense Department items, such as the Human...