NSA Replies to FOIA Request: No Chance!

The NSA has replied to one of my FOIA requests. You can find the post about the request being made here. It was for four documents related to restrictions on the distribution of NSA intercepts inside the FBI:

Unsuccessful FOIA Requests: Masterlist (Reposted)

This is a reposting from the old site, as I haven’t had any FOIA requests rejected in the recent past. Presumably, the CIA is just sitting on them.

Successful FOIA Requests: Masterlist (updated)

This is the masterlist for successful FOIA requests and is updated every time a new document is obtained based on an FOIA request. There is also a list of unsuccessful FOIA requests. I have currently obtained four documents and one set of documents by FOIA.

Mini-Grants–Apply NOW!

Okay, researchers, writers, and citizen journalists. The History Commons is offering you money on the barrelhead to write for us.

The deadline is November 15. If you’re going to apply, do it now!

Successful FOIA Request: FAA Phone Calls on Day of 9/11

I have obtained a new document via FOIA request. It is an FAA memo comprising a transcript of calls between various FAA facilities and other institutions on the day of 9/11, and was referenced in the 9/11 Commission Report, in endnote 128 to Chapter 1 (on page 459). It is not spectacularly exciting, but touches on awareness of all four hijacks, in particular the last three. You can find it here.

Reaction to James Bamford Interview about CIA’s Protection of Almihdhar and Alhazmi

Author James Bamford was recently interviewed by Amy Goodman about his new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. He talked about some issues that are covered in the 9/11 Timeline’s CIA Hiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar and Yemen hub categories. The interview follows on from an article in the Congressional Quarterly and it is well worth reading the whole thing.

New FOIA Request Filed: DoJ Memo about Intelligence Sharing from December 1999

I have filed a new FOIA request for a DoJ memo regarding caveats on sharing NSA intelligence with the FBI. The memo is mentioned in endnote 38 on page 474 of the 9/11 Commission Report, as “DOJ memo, Reno to Freeh, E.O. 12333 authorized surveillance of a suspected al Qaeda operative, Dec. 24, 1999.” It is a source for the following paragraph in the report (pp. 79-80):

Wallace on the Watergate Timeline

The other day I received a long and thoughtful e-mail from “Wallace,” who describes himself as a history teacher and JFK assassination researcher who has worked both for the House Select Committee on Assassinations and for the Assassinations Records Review Board. He’s given me permission to post a slightly revised version of the e-mail on the blog. I’ve condensed some of the original post, reorganized it a bit, and removed all personal information. Your responses and thoughts are more than welcome. For the record, I agree with about half of what he writes, but we do not restrict ourselves to merely one “approved” point of view. Wallace’s post is below the fold.

Khalid Almihdhar and His Connections to the USS Cole Bombing

One of the main arguments used by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a key speech on 4 October 2001 that held al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11 was that one of the 19 hijackers “has also been identified as playing key roles in both the East African Embassy attacks and the USS Cole attack.”

Two days later, the New York Times identified the mystery hijacker “as Mr. Almihdhar. United States investigators said they had clearly linked Mr. Almihdhar to the Cole attack and ‘possibly’ to the embassy bombings, senior American government officials said today.”

So what was Khalid Almihdhar’s role in the USS Cole bombing? Was it a “key” role, as Tony Blair claimed? And how come a known al-Qaeda operative managed to evade surveillance, help blow up a destroyer, then enter the US and fly a plane into the Pentagon?

The Co-Conspirators of Tom Wilshire

It was recently revealed that Tom Wilshire, a deputy chief of Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, conspired with other officials at the CIA to withhold information from the FBI about Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, who attended al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit and went on to hijack with plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 (blog, event, original). Previously, it was claimed that Wilshire had acted in good faith, but he was only able to come up with a dog-ate-my-homework excuse to cover his blocking of the information for the FBI. As two of his co-conspirators, Doug Miller and Marc Rossini, have confessed, we now know Wilshire was not acting in good faith. Had it not been for this conspiracy, it is highly likely the FBI would have arrested some of the hijackers before 9/11 and thwarted the plot.