Australian hacker Julian Assange, Wikileaks' silver-coiffed leader, increasingly appears to be the main character in a Web 2.0 Mad Max sequel. His past includes a carefree childhood, escaping a cult and motorcycling around Vietnam.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claims that Australian officials confiscated his passport. He added, ominously, that Australian police questioned him about his past. Was it payback for the time Wikileaks published a secret government document? We call bullshit.

Tonight on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviewed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. We were wondering how Colbert would handle a subject as serious as a video showing 12 people being killed. Well, he handled it pretty seriously.

Maybe it takes an extraordinary man to conceive and launch an extraordinary website like WikiLeaks, the notorious hub for former secrets. Even so, the site's founder Julian Assange is a surprisingly weird guy.

Today, Wikileaks caused a splash with its attack helicopter video. But the group also quietly backed down from their more alarming claims of U.S. spying. Plus, "man date" discoverer and former Times reporter Jenny 8 Lee's apparent Wikileaks connection.

Tuesday night, the secret-sharing website Wikileaks.org accused the U.S. government of conducting an "aggressive surveillance" operation on its editors. In an email, a Wikileaks editor provided some new details about this alleged surveillance, including tails, detentions and covert photography