Writer recounts FBI confrontation after publishing allegedly hacked Vance documents

Writer Ken Klippenstein revealed this week that the FBI visited his home after he published an allegedly hacked research dossier on GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.

The dossier is reported to be included among the materials included in a hack-and-leak operation that the U.S. intelligence community has pinned on Iran.

While media outlets receiving the documents have publicly passed on publishing the stolen materials, Mr. Klippenstein posted the dossier vetting Mr. Vance in an unredacted form last month on his independent website.

Mr. Klippenstein wrote Monday that the FBI visited him last week in a move he perceived as intimidation. He said the bureau warned him that he was the target of a foreign influence operation because of a news article he wrote, which he interpreted as referring to his publication of the dossier.

“No subpoena, no search warrant, no prior announcement, no claim of illegality. America’s most powerful law enforcement agency wants me to know that it was displeased,” Mr. Klippenstein wrote. “It is delivering what many would consider a chilling message: We know where you live. We know what you’ve done. We are watching.”

Many fans of the Republican ticket strongly objected to the publication of the dossier. The unredacted dossier contained personal information about Mr. Vance, including the addresses of his residences in Washington, D.C., and Ohio, and some financial information.

Much of the dossier refers to positions he has taken on public policy.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday regarding Mr. Klippenstein’s account, but the bureau has previously alerted the public to increasingly aggressive Iranian activity this election season.

In August, the U.S. intelligence community attributed  “reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign” to Iran, according to a statement from the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Iran subsequently denied any wrongdoing. Iran’s Mission to the United Nations told The Washington Times in August it had no intention of interfering in the election and demanded the U.S. government provide evidence to the contrary.

Evidence of hostile Iranian cyber operations abounds, as does Tehran’s past attempts to manipulate a free press. U.S. agencies and international partners published new technical details of Iranian cyberattackers’ hacking techniques in an advisory on Wednesday.

Last week, OpenAI disclosed that it observed an Iran-based hacking group using the AI company’s services to power its cyber operations and tested out new tools on a journalist.

While the FBI’s motivations for visiting Mr. Klippenstein are not fully clear, the bureau has a well-documented focus on journalists and publishers involved in sensitive leaks. Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington said at a Cato Surveillance Week 2024 event that the bureau has pursued journalists for more than a century.

“The very first Bureau of Investigation, in our lingo today the FBI, the very first investigation of a journalistic organization or a reporter occurred in March of 1909,” Mr. Eddington said at the Cato Institute event last week. “And it has only gotten worse in many respects over the course of the last several decades.”

Carlos Martinez de la Serna, Committee to Protect Journalists program director, told Mr. Eddington he sees the environment for press freedom worsening.

“We need to say that freedom of the press is no longer a given,” Mr. Martinez de la Serna said at the Cato Institute event.

Whether Mr. Klippenstein will face legal or professional repercussions for publishing remains to be determined. The social messaging site X suspended Mr. Klippenstein’s account after he published the dossier, but his access was later restored.

Mr. Klippenstein wrote he recognized the dossier on Mr. Vance had “probably come from Tehran” but he did not see this detail as reason not to publish the material.

He expressed more serious concern that the FBI and other federal agencies appear to have “enlisted the mainstream news media into being some kind of adjunct national security agency.”

He said he did not feel intimidated but expressed concern that the FBI might monitor him.

“I do feel a little wary, asking myself how deeply they looked into my background, my taxes, etc.,” Mr. Klippenstein wrote. “And the message is indeed chilling, even if it is laughable at the same time.