WASHINGTON -- Though propelled to fame by its recent disclosures about the U.S. military, WikiLeaks has homed in on targets as wide-ranging as corruption in the Kenyan ruling family, alleged illegal activities by a Swiss bank and Sarah Palin's private e-mail account.

And in just 31/2 years, the secretive organization founded by a convicted Australian hacker has helped pioneer a new model for using the Internet to unearth classified government documents and private corporate memos.

Operating from undisclosed locations around the world and using sophisticated Web technology, WikiLeaks has managed to largely skirt legal challenges and technical intervention. Its sources are mysterious. It appears to operate with few professional staff, supported through donations of time and money from leftist activists and others in countries ranging from Iceland to China.

Yet its controversial scoops and releases of thousands of pages of documents have helped fuel major news stories and public debates about U.S. foreign policy and other global issues.

"You really see the potential for a more informed public," said former defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who nearly 40 years ago leaked a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly eschewed the role of impartial journalist, embracing instead the role of a muckraker -- using modern technology to do what he says the mainstream media are not doing enough of.

In releasing a "War Diary" of tens of thousands of secret U.S. military reports from the war in Afghanistan, the website was unapologetic about its agenda. "We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course," the authors said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Assange and the website have become leading champions of media freedom, helping push landmark legislation in Iceland to make the country a haven for the safe dissemination of information.

And Mr. Assange has said WikiLeaks, like a traditional news organization, uses an extensive process to assure the authenticity of the documents it releases. In a recent interview with the website Ted.com, however, he acknowledged that in many cases WikiLeaks does not know the source of a leaked document.

As a "crowd-sourced" operation in the Wikipedia model, the site draws data from volunteers around the world. Other than Mr. Assange and hundreds of global volunteers, a handful of full-time staffers parse through documents and video, said Icelandic Parliament member Birgitta Jonsdottir, a WikiLeaks volunteer who has worked closely with Mr. Assange.

Ms. Jonsdottir helped work on a controversial U.S. military video WikiLeaks released this spring that showed a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq which killed two Reuters news agency employees and 10 other civilians.

In releasing the recent Afghan documents, WikiLeaks did something slightly different -- partnering with three mainstream media outlets to sort and publish the material: The New York Times, the British newspaper the Guardian and the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Afghan documents, like many of WikiLeaks' projects, drew swift charges of recklessness from the governments involved. The website has also provoked legal threats over the years from a Kenyan politician, a British bank and the Church of Scientology, which was enraged when WikiLeaks published internal church manuals.

But WikiLeaks has proven an elusive target.

Two years ago, when WikiLeaks published internal documents of Julius Baer & Co. of Zurich, raising questions about alleged money laundering and tax evasion, the bank tried to force the U.S. company that registered WikiLeaks' Web domain name to disable the site entrance. The bid was ultimately unsuccessful. No official representative of WikiLeaks even showed up in court in California.

The Swiss bank's troubles represent the challenge that the Internet poses to those trying to protect secrets, said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer who defended The New York Times against government efforts to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.

"In our website-filled world, it is extremely difficult for the government or anyone else to determine who or what released the information, or where that person or entity can be found," Mr. Abrams said.

That means that more partnerships between WikiLeaks and mainstream media could be on the horizon, said Tom Rosenstiel, founder-director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"WikiLeaks has the ability through its network to amass many documents, but maybe not the expertise to make sense of them all," he said. "Old journalism still has the means, experience, expertise and resources."

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