Missed Calls: Is the NSA lying about its failure to prevent 9/11? (James Bamford)

[questionseverything]

5. from this important article

It’s a sentiment shared by a host of national leaders, including President Obama. “One of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safe house in Yemen,” he said in a 2014 speech at the Justice Department. “NSA saw that call, but it could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the United States. The telephone metadata program under Section 215 [of the Patriot Act] was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.”

But according to some former senior NSA officials, the agency did have the technical capability in 2000 to determine that the calls to bin Laden’s operations center came from California. “They’re trying to cover up the failure of the NSA,” said J. Kirk Wiebe, a former senior analyst who worked at the NSA for 32 years, until October 2001. “And I think they’re embarrassed by that.”“They’re trying to cover up the failure of the NSA,” said J. Kirk Wiebe, a former senior analyst who worked at the NSA for 32 years, until October 2001. “And I think they’re embarrassed by that.”

k&r