Ken Whitehouse, senior reporter with The City Paper in Nashville, visited the Republican offices in downtown Franklin on Wednesday, where he was shown a manilla envelope containing the flash drive and a letter. The envelope, with crude writing and misspelled words, was hand-delivered and had no stamps, he said.

Whitehouse, who said he about the alleged hacking and is credited with breaking the story, wasn't allowed to take photos or examine the flash drive. When officials emptied the envelope on a table, "they didn't want to touch it," he said in an interview Wednesday night. "When they were done, they kind of opened the envelope and scooped [the contents] back in."

The group wants the money paid using the BitCoin digital currency, which is hard to trace, in order to prevent the decryption key from being released.

"It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the BitCoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished," the group . "The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever."

Efforts to reach the Romney campaign were not immediately successful.