The FBI Raid and Disappearance of Journalist James Gordon Meek Should Chill You to the Bone

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.

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.