So the FBI shows up at your door. And what's their ostensible reason for coming to interview? I'm familiar with elicitation techniques. I cover national security, so I know that when they say you're not in trouble, that is a ploy to try to get the person to separated from their lawyer so that they talk to you in, in, in conditions that are favorable to law enforcement. [00:00:19] There is a campaign of I don't want to say, you know, it's not like they're holding a gun to your head, but if the FBI shows up at your door or if they call your boss. I think it's hard to imagine that that's not going to have some psychological effect on how you approach the story going forward. [00:00:35] Joining us to talk about Elias Rodriguez, the young man who ended up shooting and killing two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., is independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who you should subscribe to over at Substack. He is the first journalist who obtained the manifesto of the shooter, published [00:00:55] it, and has faced some consequences and some intimidation tactics as a result. Ken, thank you so much for joining us. Hey guys. Good to be back. So good to have you. Ken used to be a colleague here at TYT. Was one of our reporters. [00:01:11] But he has moved on and is breaking some incredible stories over at Substack. So, Ken, I wanted to start off by asking you about the manifesto itself. So you obtain the manifesto and you made the decision to publish it. And I think you have a good reason for why you want to publish it. [00:01:28] Explain that reason and talk to us a little bit about why other journalists were unwilling to publish it. Yeah, we're several days past this. It's clear now that that manifesto is authentic. Cnn's chief law enforcement intelligence correspondent said that his senior intelligence sources are saying that it's authentic. [00:01:46] Basically, everybody knows it. But it's this weird kabuki of pretending. Oh, you know, they haven't FBI hasn't verified it yet, so we can't we can't put it out there. The reason that I think it's important to put it out there is not for the shock value. It's not. I've never been somebody that wants to do. You know, I don't watch true crime. I find it distasteful. [00:02:03] The reason I think it's important is because if you don't put out an account like this, once you have it verified. And I spent several hours, talking to people in order to make sure that it was authentic, and it and it, you know, was what it appeared to be. If you don't put that out, that just creates an information vacuum [00:02:21] that is quickly filled with all kind of crazy conspiracy theories and speculation. And frankly, can you blame people when they're not given the information that they should have, that they're going to come to their own conclusions and they're going to try to piece together, some, you know, narrative about, what happened. [00:02:37] So I think that's the really important, point to all of this is providing a consensus reality of like, what exactly happened so that people don't have to in their free time. Guess what it is that took place, which invariably is going to happen. That's never not going to happen. So I think that's first of all, the most important point. [00:02:54] Second of all, in a story I published subsequent to the manifesto on the individual. I think giving people a better, more realistic, warts and all view of these individuals doesn't glorify them. It makes them look. I think I didn't think he came off well at all in the, in the series [00:03:12] of interviews that I conducted and, leaked chat, chat messages that, were given to me and I think actually prevent people from romanticizing these figures and turning them into someone, not human. If you could just see the very, human human details about their, daily life. [00:03:29] So I completely disagree with what is, unfortunately, the commonly held view that if we don't talk about this, the problem will just go away. Yeah, I agree with you. And in fact, sorry, Jake, real quick, we're going to get to some of those leaked messages that you reported on, in just a moment. And you're right. I mean, he is not a likable guy. [00:03:46] He obviously had some serious issues. And I remember right after the shooting, all of these allegations of an alleged false flag were circulating all over social media. So putting this type of manifesto out there, and making clear what this guy's motivations were, I think is really important. [00:04:02] We'll get to some of the intimidation tactics you faced as a result of the federal government. In just a moment. Jake. Yeah. Take it away. So that's what I want to get to. I want to come back to all the upsides and downsides of releasing the manifesto, but. So the FBI shows up at your door. [00:04:19] And what's their ostensible reason for coming to interview? So at first, it's a sort of awkward back and forth where I'm just saying, you know, I can't talk to you guys. You need to contact my lawyer, give her my lawyer's information. They keep saying, you know, it's just for a few minutes. [00:04:34] It's no big deal. We just want to ask you some questions. They keep saying you're not in trouble, which to a layperson is going to understand that to mean, okay, it's no big deal. That doesn't mean you can't get in trouble once you start talking to them. Because, you know, anything that you tell a federal FBI, an FBI agent, [00:04:50] if there's an inaccuracy there, you can face charges for lying to the FBI. Even if you know your recollection is wrong or whatever. So I don't want to get involved in any of that. Not to mention it's just not appropriate for the press to be liaising with these agencies in charge of investigating the thing while they're reporting on it. [00:05:08] And the fact that I told them that, I said, you know, look, I'm a reporter. I can't be talking to people investigating this case while it's happening, because after I told them a couple of times, talk to my lawyer, they kept saying it. So it was like, well, what do I say to impress on them that I'm familiar with elicitation techniques? [00:05:24] I cover national security, so I know that when they say you're not in trouble, that is a ploy to try to get the person to separate from their lawyer so that they talk to you in, in, in conditions that are favorable to law enforcement. So I made that point. I said, look, I'm a reporter. I can't be talking to people involved in the thing that the investigation [00:05:41] that I'm reporting on and furnishing information and, they didn't seem impressed by that at all. And that's sent a chilling message to me. It makes me wonder how often is this happening where they're going to media talking to them, and we never hear about it. We know about one such case, because this wasn't even the first time that the FBI [00:05:58] had visited me in the past year, they visited me also when I published the J.D. Vance, research dossier, during the election campaign last year. And what was interesting, about, that visit was subsequent to my, you know, just [00:06:14] going public and describing what happened. We found out that, other news outlets also received communications and calls from the FBI. I don't remember if there were visits or not. But that only came out after I disclosed it. So there is a campaign of. I don't want to say, you know, it's not like they're holding a gun to your head, [00:06:32] but if the FBI shows up at your door or if they call your boss. I think it's hard to imagine that that's not going to have some psychological effect on how you approach the story going forward. And who knows how much this is happening. That's just one case we happen to know because I disclosed it. Then after that, Reuters was motivated to follow up on it. [00:06:49] So that's really the concern to me. So look, it's not like the Trump administration has a good record on releasing files. IFC files completely unreleased. So anytime you want to release any files, they're all over you. But did they give a reason? Like, is there a like. [00:07:06] Because going into trying to shake down a reporter for reporting very relevant news is not legitimate. So did they claim to have a legitimate reason for talking to you? Yeah. So at the very end of our conversation, we kind of the body language felt like they were going to move away. [00:07:22] They slipped this part in which I think was like a veiled threat. It's like they said something like, we want to know how you knew about this so quickly, and how you were the first reporter to put it out there. And if there, if there was coordination with the I don't remember the exact words I'm paraphrasing here, but if there was communication with the shooter before it happened, [00:07:38] the implication being that I'm in on this thing and there's some sort of plot, and I think the move there is to try to scare me and think, oh, I don't want to get in trouble. I better talk to these guys. Fortunately, I again, National security reporter I know these techniques. I understand that you always want to go through your lawyer no matter what. [00:07:55] So, you know, that didn't work on me. Again, I have to wonder how many other people at something like that might work on. And if they actually believe that. Because it's crazy to think that, you know, by definition, there's always going to be a reporter who's first to a story. You know, I think I reported I spent several hours verifying it. [00:08:11] Some people have this impression that I just run with things. That's not true. I spent hours verifying and making sure that it was true. And so it was maybe like 3 or 4 hours, maybe 4 or 5 hours after it happened. So that's pretty quick. But not I mean, it's not exactly like I had it out there within five minutes of the event taking place. [00:08:28] So what this says to me and in questions they submitted to my lawyer 11 questions, which I took and published on my, newsletter, which I encourage everyone to go and look at those specific questions to give you a sense of what it was that they wanted to know. It was essentially that it was what can they find out about potential sources? [00:08:43] What can they find out about my role in this? And that says to me that they're not using their investigative resources very wisely if they're thinking that because reporter had it 3 or 4 hours later, that constitutes some kind of suspicious behavior. I mean, things happen fast. [00:09:00] You can communicate with people quickly because of the internet. For them to jump to that, it's just crazy. And it makes me worried about that. You know, I hope that they're able to find out the truth of what happened. And if they're going off on these crazy conspiracies, it doesn't inspire much confidence that they're going to be able to. [00:09:17] I mean, they still haven't said whether the manifesto is legitimate, even though it clearly is. As I said before. Yeah, it seems like they just didn't want the manifesto to be published at all. And, you know, I'm curious, like, obviously, you know, you have the FBI showing up at your door. So you got a sense of how the federal government is [00:09:34] feeling about you publishing it. But I am curious what your readers thought about your decision to publish the manifesto. I love that you did it. I think that your reasoning behind it makes logical sense. I don't want an information vacuum to exist. [00:09:49] That is where conspiracy theories tend to rise. But any of your readers upset with you for publishing it? This is one of the most striking things about publishing these things that the rest of the media doesn't publish, and that it seems law enforcement doesn't want published, is how much [00:10:05] ordinary people are not angered by it. I thought I was, honestly, if I'm frank, I was more scared of the response to the story than I was of the FBI's visit, just because of the sensitivity of all of it. I mean, I have the same view that any sane person does. This is awful. I don't want somebody getting killed. [00:10:21] I don't want a civilian getting shot at. And when I wrote this, I thought, oh, God, am I am I going to get dogpiled? And are people going to say that I'm glorifying the shooter or whatever it is? And to my astonishment, just as was the case with the Mangione, [00:10:36] manifesto that I published before this, and then the JD Vance dossier before that, overwhelmingly, people were just glad to see what the heck happened. And I can count on one hand the number of people that were angry about it. And I was really surprised by that because I because if you compare that to clearly the attitude on the part of [00:10:52] law enforcement with regards to the suspicious on the part of media which is just pretending this isn't happening. I thought for sure there'd be some people angry about it. I've hardly seen any of it. I wonder how much of this is the FBI or the feds feeling embarrassed by the fact that you obtained the manifesto before they could even launch an investigation? [00:11:09] You know what I'm saying? I mean, who knows? I'm just speculating here. They might have had the manifesto, at the same time you did. But it just seems weird to me that, you know, they show up at your door and they start, you know, implying that maybe you were coordinating with this lunatic. [00:11:26] So, Jake, I want to toss over to you if you have anything to ask. Yeah. So, look, Ken, it feels like the authorities constantly saying the public can't be trusted, that if they, even hear or read a mad man's words, that's it. [00:11:41] Their brains going to melt, and they're all going to turn into, terrorists or killers, etc.. And I think that you're getting the reaction you're getting from those because they're like, yeah, let me read it and be the judge of whether my brain is brain's going to melt or not. And so having now read that manifesto, it looks like, yeah, that's the idiot [00:12:01] who shot those two innocent people. And so he explains why he did it. It's not a good reason. There isn't a good reason. And so when I look at it, I think, wait, do the authorities not want us to know the real reason he did it? [00:12:17] Because the real reason is already perfectly terrible, right? So. But now I see, pro-Israel forces, including representative Randy fine all over television, saying in the manifesto, he says to globalize the intifada. Well, I read it twice. It doesn't say that at all, does it? [00:12:33] - Ken. - Yeah, it doesn't say it. No, it doesn't. And that's the problem with allowing major media and systems of power to paraphrase to people, what is said. I mean, we had the Protestant Reformation over exactly this question. Are you able to read the original text or not? Or do you need a priest class inserting itself between you and that text? [00:12:51] And unfortunately, that's what the media has become when they do this. They did the exact same thing with the Mangione document. I remember watching CNN and seeing them paraphrase. They said something like, well, there's not even really anything of substance in there. This is just the rantings of a crazy person. I'll tell you, when I published that manifesto and I got, you know, [00:13:08] endless people saying, obviously I don't want to kill somebody like Mangione is alleged to have done. But I, people resonated with the pain that he felt about the healthcare on a systemic basis. And so, to see that response and then compare it with what the media [00:13:26] had claimed, oh, you don't need to see it. We'll paraphrase it for you, or law enforcement will paraphrase it and then, drop, you know, kind of select leaks and comments in the media, which they did about that. So they're happy to talk about the contents, just the contents, the portions of it that they want to talk about and the paraphrase that they want to do. [00:13:43] It's not that they don't want to talk about it. They want to talk about it on their terms. It's when you actually give people the underlying thing so that there are no terms, and people can just decide what they think. That's what they, dislike. And dislike. And it's really pernicious. I don't see any explanation for that other than, being that it's about control and they want to have control of the narrative. [00:14:00] So, yeah, they want to gatekeep for sure. Go ahead Jake. Yeah. Just real quick follow up on that, Ken. Because the manifesto also disproves some of the kooky theories, from the people opposed to Israel, where they were. Oh, is it a false flag operation? Did Israel do it themselves? [00:14:17] And you read the manifesto? No, it's definitely not a false flag operation. This clown, imbecile, you know, a killer did it on his own. And, you know, he was proud about his manifesto, and he published it. So, again, it seems like the government is so, at a minimum, [00:14:37] doesn't trust its own citizens. And then when they keep things like this hidden, Ken, doesn't it fester on all sides? Oh, I bet Israel did it, you know, from that side, which is terrible. And they didn't. Right. And I or or you know. [00:14:53] Oh, he said that we should globalize the intifada and everyone protesting Israel is just as guilty as I am or whatever insane thing that Randy fine is making up. Just trust me, right? So. And that's why it feels like the government taking this action. [00:15:11] I don't know, is either a statement saying we don't trust our own citizens, or we'd like to keep it hidden for a reason, for a policy reason rather than a legitimate reason. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously they don't want to talk about the geopolitical context [00:15:27] in which it took place, because that leads to all sorts of awkward questions and a debate that they don't want to have. So it's simply, you know, it's just like with Mangione, he's crazy. It's a crazy person. I mean, the, you know, logic is indecipherable to me, but I mean, this [00:15:43] couldn't be a more straightforward case in the sense that, you know, I just we mentioned this earlier. I just wrote a story based on half a dozen interviews of people that knew him and, you know, a huge trove of text messages in a private chat that he was a member of. This person was a, you know, hard left Maoist, third Worldist. [00:16:03] That's how he described himself. And in that worldview, you pursue violence against, you know, your perceived adversaries. And, it's not a democratic worldview. And so that's pretty much what this was. It couldn't be more straightforward than that. [00:16:18] I mean, obviously, you know, that worldview, what angered him was what's happening in Gaza, but that was filtered through this prism of, this, you know, hard left, authoritarian, way of seeing the world. [00:16:33] And I just wish people could see that. And, you know, Anna mentioned earlier that there were these conspiracy theories about, it being some kind of false flag event and which I, you know, was able to corroborate on a data basis just by looking at Google Trends and seeing this thing spike the the phrase false flag spiking [00:16:50] the highest level it has in the past year. You know, I mean, there's a whole cottage industry around fighting disinformation. There's a very easy way. It's by being transparent. Yeah. And I do appreciate that you just today published those messages. You know, he was in a message group. He was very active in that message group. [00:17:09] And aside from being radicalized politically, he just seemed like a very troubled person. Right. Just going through a lot angry. And someone who's in that kind of mindset is very easy to radicalize, right? Seem to have some sort of, affinity for Stalin type, you know, [00:17:28] political figures, which blows my mind. But nonetheless, I mean, do you get a sense of where he got radicalized, or is this something that just kind of happened organically? Do you have a sense of that at all? So this is another frustrating part about the mainstream account. [00:17:44] When you leave out the records that we know exist and that we're able to verify, the, the presumption on the part of the press so far has been, oh, you know, October, October 7th is what radicalized him. And I'm sure the national security system is going to kick in and say, oh, this is October 7th phenomenon. [00:18:00] Clearly that was a part of it. But when you talk to people that knew him going, I talked to people that knew him since adolescence, since middle school, and that was how far back some of these texts went. This person was disillusioned with the political system since he was 15 years old. [00:18:15] Wow. And yeah, and he was supportive of these, you know, authoritarian left, I don't know, theories or worldviews, whatever you want to call them. Going back many years, definitely before October 7th. So, this is a much more complex phenomena that I think has a lot to do with [00:18:33] people's dissatisfaction with the system. And that obviously interacts with things like the Israel, things like the Gaza war. But to say that in isolation, the entirety of this is just about, you know, it's just about post October 7th that misses the entire mark of what exactly happened. [00:18:52] And if you're serious about preventing stuff like this from happening in the future, it is necessary to understand. I mean, when the Trump administration wants to turn this whole thing into, some kind of ethnic hate crime as leaving out the whole geopolitical context, not only are you misunderstanding what happened, [00:19:09] you are risking pursuing charges that you're not going to be able to sustain and are going to undermine your case. So I think that even people who, their only interest is seeing this person face as stiff of a penalty as he can. I think even they should care about this stuff being out there. [00:19:24] - Ken, was he a tankie? - I think he was clearly. I mean, so many of the texts were just these internecine fights about these alphabet soup groups that I struggle to even keep up with. You know, after the shooting, it was quickly reported that he had some [00:19:42] association with a group called the PSL. And so I went through the text messages and found him railing against the PSL for not being sufficiently left on some obscure basis that I couldn't quite understand. And so he liked this other, you know, subculture within these, [00:20:00] Maoist sects or what? I mean, it's almost like a religion. It has so many different branches and offshoots and, and, its own theology and everything. But yes, I think it's fair to say that he was a tankie. Yeah. He, he's awful in every way. And I'm grateful for you and your reporting, Ken. [00:20:16] Thank you so much for having the guts to do what a lot of journalists out there were unwilling to do by publishing his manifesto, along with the manifestos of others who have been in the news recently. So keep it up, everyone. Please check out Ken Klippenstein newsletter over at Substack. [00:20:32] Ken klippenstein.com is where you can subscribe. Please support the work he's doing as an independent journalist. We need independent journalists out there. Ken, you're absolutely kicking ass. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, guys. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. [00:20:47] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.