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On this week’s Underreported, Dan Coughlin, reporter for The Nation magazine, Kim Ives, editor for Haiti Liberté, discuss what the WikiLeaks cables reveal about American diplomatic attitudes toward Haiti – both before and after the devasting earthquake there in 2010. A new series of reports about the 1,918 cables that relate to Haiti is being published in a partnership between The Nation and the Haiti Liberté newspaper.

It’s been a year since Bradley Manning was arrested for allegedly handing over a half million classified documents to WikiLeaks, in the biggest intelligence breach in U.S. history. The former Army intelligence analyst remains jailed in the Army brig in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, awaiting his first pre-trial hearing, while WikiLeak’s head Julian Assange lives under police watch in a home near London. Their relationship is the focus of a Frontline documentary "WikiSecrets," airing tonight. Bradley Manning’s father Brian Manning says his son is innocent. He joins Frontline correspondent Martin Smith to discuss his son and the documentary.

Vanity Fair contributor Sarah Ellison talks about the troubled relationship between The Guardian and Wikileaks. Her article “The Man Who Spilled the Secrets” gives an account of the five months of stops and starts and all the machinations with Julian Assange and his lawyers at The Guardian’s London offices, which led to the publication of WikiLeaks’ cache of diplomatic cables on November 29. “The Man Who Spilled the Secrets” appears in the February issue of Vanity Fair.

Daniel Ellsberg, activist and subject of the film The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, weighs in on the significance of the Afghanistan WikiLeaks documents and comparisons between Wikileaks and the Pentagon Papers.

The revelations contained in the State Department cables that were published by WikiLeaks have captured headlines for the last few weeks. On today’s Backstory, Elizabeth Dickinson, Assistant Managing Editor for Foreign Policy, explains what the WikiLeaks cables have revealed about government corruption around the world—and how the United States has responded.

Julian Assange was in court again this morning. The WikiLeaks founder is still fighting extradition to Sweden for alleged sex crimes, but today's appearance had more to do with the conditions of his bail. A British judge in a high court heard an appeal from prosecutors, but ruled against the appeal, allowing Assange to be freed from jail for some $317,000 bail. Other stipulations may also apply; the 39-year-old Australian might have to wear an electronic monitoring device, and give up his passport. But he reportedly does plan on leaving his cell for some nicer digs: a 10-room mansion in Essex.   

The leaky faucet of information from WikiLeaks continues even as Julian Assange is in custody. What are this week's findings as reporters sift through the documents? Somali pirates discover underground shipments of weapons to Sudan coming from the Ukraine; an Iraqi ambassador predicts how insurgents will use video of the taunting of Saddam Hussein to recruit, and the portrayal of Chinese leaders as obsessed with the Internet's potential threat to their power. For more on these news bits we speak with Andrew Lehren reporter for our partner The New York Times. 

The online group "Anonymous" has no official leadership; planning sessions for "Operation Payback" happen in semi-public online chat servers, run by volunteer coordinators. How does this hive-minded group make decisions about who or what to target? Journalist Brendan Greeley, from The Economist, managed to connect to one of their planning sessions.

The real world is catching up with the cyber-punk books of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson — books populated by information terrorists, online hackers and a “cyberspace” every bit as real as our own world. Yesterday, thousands of supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange staged an online campaign to try and overwhelm the websites of companies including Amazon, PayPal and MasterCard.com, going so far as to swamp the credit card company’s website intermittently throughout the morning. Who are the players directing this online stampede, what are their methods and their motivations? 

The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has sparked an online furor. By utilizing "distributed denial of service" attacks to attempt to overwhelm companies' web servers, the activist group "Anonymous" has targeted organizations that they feel worked against WikiLeaks’ efforts in the days leading up to Assange's arrest on Monday. Anonymous has vowed to continue its online efforts, which have so far been directed at Amazon, PayPal, Visa...and even took the MasterCard website offline for much of yesterday morning. How serious are these attacks, and what are the methods of the people behind them?

Our listeners have had a lot to say during our coverage of WikiLeaks and the news on Julian Assange, from all parts of the opinion spectrum.   

Kevin from Kansas had this to say: 

Assange is not some hero making us aware of a policy he disagrees with. He just releases as much sensitive information as possible to create damage. What if he was leaking information damaging to you? Prosecute him to the MAX.

Nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot has put out many albums with songs about tech subjects, including online security and the futility of trying to keep secrets in a wired world. Most of his albums have found their following among a niche audience of self-professed nerds. So what's a rapper to do when the obscure subjects he writes about suddenly dominate the headlines for weeks on end? 

Are the companies who deny services to WikiLeaks, and the hackers who attack those sites in retaliation, starting a cyber war, and if so, do both sides have a digital ax to grind? 

MasterCard.com, PayPal, and other sites are suffering large-scale attacks from a hacker group called “Anonymous”. The group claims it’s retaliating against companies that have stopped working with WikiLeaks.

Are these prankster antics or the start of a technological war?

All morning, hackers claiming to be fighting back on behalf of Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been attacking major websites that recently stopped offering services to the organization. "Operation Payback" has already brought down Mastercard's site, Paypal is under attack, as is a bank that froze Julian Assange's accounts. Meanwhile, Julian Assange is in custody in England, waiting to see if he'll be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. Ironically, the attacks on these major sites aren't all that different from similar efforts to bring down Wikileaks itself (one tactic being used is to take down the sites by pure volume of traffic). But how do they really work, and how do hackers decide what to target?   

A hacker group known as "Anonymous" has reportedly initiated "Operation Payback" a call for attacks on several websites in retaliation for those sites pulling services from Wikileaks in the past 24 hours. So far, Mastercard's website has been brought down, PayPal is under attack as is Swiss bank PostFinance, which recently froze Julian Assange's bank accounts at the institution. We're joined by Rory Cellan-jones, reporter for our partner the BBC, for more on this breaking story.  

As major sites remove services to Wikileaks, and hackers retaliate by trying to bring those sites down, some say a cyber war is beginning, and are using the battle to make further arguments for internet freedom. Laurence "Loz" Kaye, head of the U.K. Pirate Party, has helped provide Wikileaks with "mirror sites," when the organization was under attack from hackers. He joins us now to talk about the battle lines being drawn online.

Julian Assange turned himself over to police in London on Tuesday, bringing to a close a period of speculation about how and whether the WikiLeaks founder would wind up in custody. Assange currently faces extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for discussion with the police on alleged sex crimes. His problems may not end at the Swedish border, however.

In the run up to the arrest of Julian Assange, large companies, including Amazon, Visa and Paypal, refused to continue doing business with WikiLeaks, saying the site and its staff had violated various terms of service. Being dropped has meant WikiLeaks has had to change its online domain name, source its documents from a different web hosting company, and, accept donations via methods other than credit cards. Was this tightening of the noose business as usual or an unethical over-use of corporate power?