Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The FBI Raid and Disappearance of Journalist James Gordon Meek Should Chill You to the Bone
Red State ^ | 10/22/2022 | Jennifer Oliver O'Connell

Posted on 10/22/2022 8:12:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

James Gordon Meek is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who worked as a correspondent and producer for ABC News. He is articulate, focused, and relentless in his work as an investigative journalist, and exposed the coverup behind the death of four U.S. Special Forces soldiers in Niger, Africa in 2017. This is not Meek’s first time calling out the United States Military and their lack of accountability, along with the lack of leadership existent in our current brass. Over the last year, Meek has been promoting his Hulu documentary, 3212 Un-Redacted, where he documents this Niger expose and its fallout.

In discussing his deep dive into yet another military debacle, Meek spoke with “Reel Talker” host Jim Alexander in November 2021, and said,

“But the truth matters, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s the bottom line. We’re sort of accustomed to the government lying, but this was extraordinary, they lied to families whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice for you and me. That is just, most people would agree, a disgrace.”

The government’s record of disgrace continues, once again, straight from the Department of Justice. On April 27, 2022, the FBI raided Meek’s home and leaked the information that Meek had classified information on his laptop, which precipitated the need to conduct the raid. Purportedly, the warrant and the reasons behind the raid should be under seal; but such is the nature of this FBI.

I am nowhere near the investigative journalist that Meek is, but the last thing I would think of doing is leaving sensitive information on my laptop. That’s Investigative Journalism 101. If anything, you bury several copies someplace non-digital and non-traceable. These days, my dog’s bed is safer than a safe deposit box. I seriously doubt a savvy professional like Meek made such a grave error in judgment. But, there are lots of things being manufactured by the government these days—none of them good.

After this raid, it was discovered that Meek had abruptly resigned from his nine-plus year producing gig at ABC News and has not been heard from since.

 

Rolling Stone Magazine mounted its own investigation:

Facts: https://t.co/VNyhbFETvT

— James Gordon Meek (@meekwire) April 27, 2022

 

Outside his Arlington, Virginia, apartment, a surreal scene was unfolding, and his storied career was about to come crashing down. Meek’s tweet marked the last time he’s posted on the social media platform.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter say Meek was the target of an FBI raid at the Siena Park apartments, where he had been living on the top floor for more than a decade. An FBI representative told Rolling Stone its agents were present on the morning of April 27 “at the 2300 block of Columbia Pike, Arlington, Virginia, conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity. The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation.”

Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration. A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on the search warrant the day before the raid. If the raid was for Meek’s records, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessing; a new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ documents. Any exception requires the deputy AG’s approval. (Gabe Rottman at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press says, “To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a case [since January 2021].)

In the raid’s aftermath, Meek has made himself scarce. None of his Siena Park neighbors with whom Rolling Stone spoke have seen him since, with his apartment appearing to be vacant. Siena Park management declined to confirm that their longtime tenant was gone, citing “privacy policies.” Similarly, several ABC News colleagues — who are accustomed to unraveling mysteries and cracking investigative stories — tell Rolling Stone that they have no idea what happened to Meek.

This is chilling. The Department of Justice has truly become Joe Biden’s enforcement arm. From parents who are vocal about the immorality occurring in their local school boards being targeted as domestic terrorists to waging vendettas against former President Donald Trump, to raiding the homes of investigative journalist James O’Keefe and other Project Veritas journalists over presidential daughter Ashley Biden’s journal. We have moved far past the covert targeting of Sharyl Atkisson and James Rosen to overt action to quell free speech and silence anyone seeking, documenting, and publishing the truth.

Frankly, it’s sobering and scary.

Meek also partnered on a book with retired green beret Lt. Colonel Scott Mann that Meek appeared to be quite proud about. This all changed after the FBI raid.

Even stranger, in the months before he vanished, Meek was finishing up work on a book for Simon & Schuster titled Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan, which he co-authored with Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret. Meek even featured a picture of the soon-to-publish book in his bio on social media and frequently tweeted about his involvement. But post-April 27, the book-jacket photo disappeared from his bio, and Simon & Schuster has scrubbed his name from all press materials. The first sentence of the jacket previously read: “In April, ABC News correspondent James Gordon Meek got an urgent call from a Special Forces operator serving overseas.” Now it says: “In April, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas.”

Early press materials, available on the Wayback Machine, gushed about Meek’s credentials: “He has covered the rise of Al Qaeda since 1998, from the Millennium Plot to reporting from the ground outside the Pentagon after a hijacked plane hit it on September 11, 2001, to combat embeds with US and Afghan Special Forces in Afghanistan. James has looked terrorists in the eye including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at Guantánamo, ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid and ‘dirty bomber’ Jose Padilla inside the Supermax federal prison, and Zacarias Moussaoui at his trial.”

Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request for comment. Mann, who is solely promoting the book, which published in August and became a New York Times bestseller, says he is unsure of what exactly happened to Meek.

“He contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project,” Mann tells Rolling Stone. “As a guy who’s a combat veteran who has seen that kind of strain — I don’t know what it was — I honored it. And he went on his way, and I continued on the project.”

Mann says he hasn’t heard from Meek since.

The fact that Meek has disappeared is more disturbing than the fact that he was raided. A missing journalist is the stuff of the former Soviet Union and present Iranian governments. With our constitutional free speech protections, American journalists should not have to fear government retaliation or reprisal on any level.

But, this is now Biden’s America.



TOPICS: Conspiracy; Government; Society
KEYWORDS: 2017; 202204; 20220427; 3212unredacted; africa; disappearance; fbi; hesapedo; jamesgordonmeek; jenniferoconnell; kiddieporn; ltcolscottmann; niger; nigerflap; oconnell; oppineappleexpress; pedo; pedophile; pineappleexpress; plamenamegame; porn; raid; scottmann
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-42 next last

1 posted on 10/22/2022 8:12:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Material Witness, Protective Custody, Witness Protection?


2 posted on 10/22/2022 8:18:23 PM PDT by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Beard about this but not from too many places.
It’s being ignored.
The mediots in the press aren’t putting two and two together and realizing if it can happen to him it can happen to them.


3 posted on 10/22/2022 8:18:41 PM PDT by Darksheare (Those who support liberal "Republicans" summarily support every action by same. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

This reads like a Hollywood spy movie.
Hopefully he’s laying low and not “disappeared”.


4 posted on 10/22/2022 8:22:09 PM PDT by EEGator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Swimming with the fishes. He likely has been Clintonized.


5 posted on 10/22/2022 8:30:14 PM PDT by drypowder
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: drypowder

You mean Arkancided.


6 posted on 10/22/2022 8:39:55 PM PDT by EvilCapitalist (81 million votes my ass.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Thraid on James O’Keefe and his journalists was first.


7 posted on 10/22/2022 8:40:08 PM PDT by Eagles6 (Welcome to the Matrix . Orwell's "1984" was a warning, not an instruction manual.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: PLMerite

That’s crossed my mind too


8 posted on 10/22/2022 8:41:30 PM PDT by HollyB
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

But remember that according to the anointed, Drumph is a fascist.


9 posted on 10/22/2022 8:50:24 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

The FBI tortured him for information, accidentally killed him in the process, and buried the body.


10 posted on 10/22/2022 9:02:48 PM PDT by Flick Lives (Cui bono)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
Our Stasi has learned the lessons of the original Stasi very well...

Secret internment camps, permanent disappearances, and umbrella-equivalent deaths now are commonplace in this country...

Too bad Americans did not take the time to read a classic of Soviet history...
If they had, maybe we would not now be reliving it...

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation....

We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

11 posted on 10/22/2022 9:09:29 PM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is the next Sam Adams when we so desperatly need him)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

ABC is broadcasting this 24/7 right?
Where is he they ask, we demand answers!!
Nope, just crickets.

Ex-Chinese President Hu Jintao forced from party congress, erased from internet as Xi Jin Ping solidifies power (Watch Video of His Removal)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4102752/posts?page=1


12 posted on 10/22/2022 9:43:41 PM PDT by minnesota_bound (Need more money to buy everything now)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SuperLuminal

I recognized it immediately

A chilling read. I wish some here on afar would read it to understand the depravity of communism


13 posted on 10/22/2022 11:16:09 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
I disagree with this statement.
“But the truth matters, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s the bottom line. We’re sort of accustomed to the government lying, but this was extraordinary, they lied to families whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice for you and me. That is just, most people would agree, a disgrace.”
The circumstances of a military death can be sensitive enough not to be disclosed.   It is that simple.
14 posted on 10/22/2022 11:26:11 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken! )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: higgmeister

I disagree with you.
Our military shouldn’t be sent into situations that “sensitive ‘


15 posted on 10/22/2022 11:33:11 PM PDT by hoosierham (Freedom isnt free)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Nifster

I see it as an how to regarding stopping the otherwise inevitable genocide


16 posted on 10/23/2022 3:42:57 AM PDT by Chickensoup (Genocide is here. Leftist extremists are spearhheading the Genocide against conservatives. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: minnesota_bound
This story will slowly fade away into the sunset
17 posted on 10/23/2022 5:27:43 AM PDT by Roccus (First we beat the Nazis........Then we defeated the Soviets....... Now, we are them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

If this were A Trump admin action the press would have ganged up en mas on day one, but alas, it the demon party, their party. What to do what to do…


18 posted on 10/23/2022 5:35:22 AM PDT by TalBlack (We have a Christian duty and a patriotic duty. God help us.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
Should Chill You to the Bone

It merely reaffirms what I already knew.

19 posted on 10/23/2022 6:36:03 AM PDT by GingisK
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GingisK

Simple Confirmation of modus operandi
Someday they will tell the truth and shock us all.


20 posted on 10/23/2022 7:25:00 AM PDT by griswold3 (There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs. – Thomas Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-42 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson