I don’t know. I did some Googling to little success. While there has been much discussion about what they have been leaking, I am more interested in knowing how they and Mr. Assange make their money. He seems to be living quite “high on the hog”, the website is not free to maintain and attorney’s fees can’t be cheap. They say that they have journalists and that they have traveled to verify stories. Reporters might choose to work for free but travel is not free.
One interesting WSJ quote from Mr. Assange regarding one source of funding, “WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that “act as a front” for the website, he [Mr. Assange ] said. He declined to give their names, saying they could “lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities.” One might wonder if the US government is inadvertently funding them while they disseminate our national secrets, that would be rich. One of those kooky sounding earmarks maybe…. Should Wikileaks really enjoy tax exempt status and should donations to it really be tax deductible?!!! It would probably be too much to expect that there is an FBI investigation into this aspect.
I suppose they just may be a group of altruistic souls on a mission to expose misdeeds wherever they find them funded by like minded generous contributors with no political point of view or motives. Call me cynical but I really doubt it.
Here is a Wall Street Journal article from earlier this year that found little in the way of answers.
