Assange: Financial blockade may close WikiLeaks

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press – Oct 24, 2011

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks — whose spectacular publication of classified data shook world capitals and exposed the inner workings of international diplomacy — may be weeks away from collapse, the organization's leader said Monday.

Although its attention-grabbing leaks spread outrage and embarrassment across military and diplomatic circles, WikiLeaks' inability to overturn the block on donations imposed by American financial companies may prove its undoing.

"If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year," founder Julian Assange told journalists at London's Frontline Club. "If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue."

As an emergency measure, Assange said his group would cease what he called "publication operations" to focus its energy on fundraising. He added that WikiLeaks — which he said had about 20 employees — needs an additional $3.5 million to keep it going into 2013.

WikiLeaks, launched as an online repository for confidential information, shot to notoriety with the April 2010 disclosure of footage of two Reuters journalists killed by a U.S. military strike in Baghdad.

The Pentagon had claimed that the journalists were likely "intermixed among the insurgents," but the helicopter footage, which captured U.S. airmen firing on prone figures and joking about "dead bastards," unsettled many across the world.

Associated Press