It was the biggest leak in history. WikiLeaks infuriated the world's greatest superpower, embarrassed the British royal family and helped cause a revolution in North Africa. The man behind it was Julian Assange, one of the strangest figures ever to become a worldwide celebrity. Internet messiah or cyber-terrorist? Information freedom fighter or sex criminal? In this film tie-in edition, award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding follow the story as it takes on ever-weirder twists and turns.

In London, Assange went to ground in the back bedroom of the Ecuadorian embassy. Meanwhile, in a courtroom near Washington, the fate of the US army whistleblower Bradley Manning hung in the balance. And in Hawaii, a young man named Edward Snowden, working as a contractor for the National Security Agency, was about to take WikiLeaks into even darker territory.