"The deep state does not respond to FOIA requests"

spooked911

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Fri Oct-30-09 08:19 PM
Original message

"The deep state does not respond to FOIA requests"

Interesting article:
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/blogentries/index.html?bbPostId=B1ghrr2nKXlgCzAxJ6JhFH8utCz2nH27BOC6G5B2A0qlAQFgaZ

In an attempt to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, citizen investigator Aidan Monaghan has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with federal agencies such as the FBI, SEC, Department of the Navy, and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Agency after agency has refused to comply with his requests, instead claiming that the information cannot be found, does not exist, was never properly filed, or even, from the FAA, that it was simply �not in a position to release said records at this time.�

The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by President Johnson in 1966. It mandates that information held by federal agencies must be made available to any citizen requesting it, unless that information is exempt. The Act specifies nine reasons why any given piece of information could be exempt, such as invasion of personal privacy, trade secrets, anything related to the supervision or regulation of financial institutions, and anything that could compromise either law enforcement or national security. In addition, the FBI has put an exemption on all of their 9/11 information and will release information only if compelled to do so by a lawsuit, of which Monaghan has filed two.

Despite the persistent stonewalling, Monaghan has turned up some interesting discrepancies. While it was widely reported in the media, such as by USA Today, that the flight data recorder (FDR) also known as the �black box,� for American Airlines flight 77 (the plane that allegedly hit the Pentagon on 9/11) was found at 4 am on September 14, 2001, the file containing the FDR data was dated over four hours earlier. In other words, we are asked to believe that the data from the FDR was downloaded prior to the FDR being found.

When Monaghan filed a Request for Correction with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and pointed out this disparity, his request was denied and an explanation offered that the file was created as a routine procedure prior to finding the FDR. However the FDR file indicates three parameters: date created, date modified, and date accessed. The �date created� and �date modified� fields are both listed as 11:45:38 pm on September 13, 2001, indicating that no data was added later, after the FDR was found. The �date accessed� field is blank.

This is, Monaghan says, �sufficient reason to wonder if the information is faked.�

Monaghan has also established that the NTSB does not have either serial or part numbers for the FDRs from American Airlines flight # 77 or United Airlines flight # 93 (which allegedly crashed in Shanksville, PA). This is highly unusual, in fact, according to Monaghan, there is only one other occasion in the past 20 years when the NTSB report for a airplane crash did not contain the part and serial numbers for the FDR. That was, oddly enough, exactly ten years earlier, on September 11, 1991, when a Continental Express flight broke up in mid-air, killing 14 people, when the horizontal stabilizer failed. The accident was blamed on the negligence of Continental�s maintenance and inspection crew.

The NTSB�s own handbook indicates that the part number and serial number of the FDR are required for data readout of the FDR. The NTSB did not have this information, giving us another reason to question how the FDR data was created.

(Continued at the link)