One of the documents Erik found at the National Archives and posted to the 9/11 Document Archive contains additional information about the failure to find alleged Pentagon hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The document, a memo of a 9/11 Commission interview of former FBI General Counsel Larry Parkinson drafted by commission staffer Barbara Grewe, concerns a consultation on August 28, 2001 between Dina Corsi, an FBI headquarters agent, and Sherry Sabol, an attorney at the FBI’s National Security Law Unit.
November 19, 2009
November 17, 2009
Another Alias Found
I have found another one of the aliases used in the various 9/11 reports. The real name of Tim, an FBI National Security Law Unit attorney who was consulted about the Zacarias Moussaoui case, is Tom Ainora. Tim is mentioned in the Justice Department inspector general’s report into the FBI’s pre-9/11 failings.
This has been added to the list of aliases post, which you can find here.
I found the name in a document that Eric got from the National Archives and uploaded to the 9/11 Document Archive at Scribd. It is a memo summarising an interview with former FBI General Counsel Larry Parkinson, drafted by 9/11 Commission Special Projects team leader Barbara Grewe. Ainora’s real name is mentioned at the bottom of page 5.
November 14, 2009
A Perfect Quote for the History Commons
Well, at least in my opinion. I came across it in the introduction to Sean Wilentz’s The Age of Reagan, but it’s originally from a 1984 tome by Theodore Draper. Draper wrote:
I have written for the reader who was no longer interested in the daily or even weekly ration of news; this reader wanted to understand it in some organized form and some historical perspective. No doubt the organization and perspective would change as time went on and more information or insight became available. Life cannot wait, however, for historians to gather enough evidence to satisfy them or to make up their minds once they get it. Even a preliminary organization and perspective represent an advance, however provisional. We must make do with what we have while it is still possible to do something about the matter.
Naturally, I do not contend that I or anyone else on the Commons is fit to carry the pencil cases of Wilentz or Draper, two of our generation’s most eminent historians. But I think Draper’s words fit our raison d’etre very nicely, with one important difference: we don’t wait for historians, either ourselves or others, to make judgments and present them to the public. We provide the information and let the public make its own judgments, based on the best and most complete information we can present.
(Cross-posted at the History Commons blog.)
The Real Reason Only Five Detainees Are Coming to New York?
US Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced that five detainees would be moved from Guantanamo Bay to New York, where they would stand trial for carrying out the 9/11 attacks. However, five other detainees will continue to be tried before military commissions, which have lower standards of evidence. The five detainees coming to New York have previously indicated they intend to plead guilty, although the five to be tried before military commissions have not.
The Very Evident Guilt of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
The US Justice Department yesterday announced that five Guantanamo detainees would finally be moved to New York to face a normal trial, while others, including alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, would face not ordinary trials, but military commissions.
Reading between the lines of the officials statements and taking comment pieces into account, it seems that the reason for this is that prosecutors are confident of convicting the five to be sent to New York (who will very probably plead guilty, so there won’t be a trial), but not so sure they could convict al-Nashiri.
I was pretty surprised by this decision, and would simply like to highlight some evidence indicating al-Nashiri’s guilt that, in my opinion, is very strong and would very probably be admissible in a normal court. Primarily, this is the statement al-Nashiri made at his military commission hearing in spring 2007 (and presumably similar statements he would have made to FBI investigators in Guantanamo Bay).
November 12, 2009
More Very Partial FOIA Success
The FBI has sent me a largely uninteresting cover letter in response to an FOIA request filed when your grandfather was a small boy. The letter was originally sent in 2003 with a report about an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) into FBI abuse of the so-called “wall” procedures, which regulated information sharing between intelligence agents on one side and prosecutors and criminal agents on the other.
Together with the cover letter, the report totals 244 pages, but will not be forthcoming from the FBI. As it was done by the OPR, it should come to me from the DoJ. The bureau also sent me a six-page list of the other page numbers (3 to 244, understandably) and next to each number is the text “Referral/direct.” If you don’t believe they could do anything this pointless, see here.
At the bottom of a fairly confusing letter from the FBI that came with the cover letter for the report, it says:
The 242 pages withheld from the enclosed file originated with the Department of Justice and were referred to that agency for their review and direct response to you. Due to an administrative error, these pages have not previously been forwarded.
I take this to mean that they only just sent the DoJ the other 242 pages to review for redaction. This despite the fact that on 10 May 2007, 9 August 2007, and 16 June 2008 the bureau wrote to assure me, “Currently your request is being reviewed by an analyst.” One can only wonder what the analyst was reviewing for over 14 months. All she had to do, apparently, is send me a two-page cover letter and pop the rest of the report in the internal post. How can that take more than a few minutes?
Whereas most FOIA requests generate an instant demand for money, followed by a long silence, this request (which was for other documents as well, and some of them have already been produced) led to a bewildering array of correspondence and much amusement on my part.
You can find a list of unsuccessful FOIA requests here, and a list of successful ones here.
November 11, 2009
Dan Schulz, RIP
This is an entirely personal blog post, and has almost nothing to do with the Commons. But for this case, I’m gonna exercise executive privilege.
A friend passed away the other day, Dan Schulz. You can read the tributes to his memory and his legacy on the SitePoint forum.
November 10, 2009
The New York Times Drops Stephen Kappes in It
The New York Times had a long article yesterday about the “Italian job” rendition of an Islamist extremist known as Abu Omar. I liked the last two paragraphs best:
Most of the top C.I.A. officers said to have planned the Abu Omar rendition have left the agency, with the exception of Stephen R. Kappes, who at the time was the assistant director of the C.I.A.’s clandestine branch.
He is now the C.I.A.’s second ranking official.
This is the first mention of Kappes’ involvement I know of. Nice of the NYT to wait until the last two paragraphs to drop him in it. I’m sure it was read with interest at the prosecutor’s office in Milan.
Hattip: Scott Horton.
November 9, 2009
9/11 Commission Passed on NEADS Tapes Month before Issuing Subpoena for Them
Documents newly found at the National Archives show that in the weeks before the 9/11 Commission issued a subpoena for tapes of events at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) on the day of the attacks, it told the military not to send some or all of them to the commission. The documents are internal commission e-mails and a memo, as well as communications between the commission and the military. They were found at the National Archives by History Commons contributor Erik Larson (a.k.a. paxvector) and posted to the 9/11 Document Archive at Scribd.
