HMC-FMF-PJ
02-03-2009, 23:16
Simply a MUST SEE program!
NOVA: The Spy Factory
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/
Watch online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program.html
Program teaser video (2 min low band trailer)
http://media.pbs.org/asxgen/general/windows/wgbh/nova/prev_3602_036.wmv.asx
An eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency (NSA), the PBS program NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the Sept 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent domestic spying program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
In this program, NOVA chronicles the NSA's role in eavesdropping both before and after Sept 11. Drawing on dozens of interviews with agency insiders and probing publicly available sources as well as transcripts of terrorist trials and an FBI chronology of the terrorists' movements, NOVA assembles a detailed picture of events leading up to the Sept 11 attacks and sheds light on the vital data known inside the NSA. The trove of information the NSA had access to in advance included Osama bin Laden's now-disconnected direct satellite phone, which the NSA tapped starting in 1996. Exclusive footage shows the three-story house in Yemen that served as Al Qaeda's communications and logistics headquarters. The NSA was listening in on phone communications to and from the house for years prior to the Sept 11 attack.
Since Sept 11, the agency has turned its giant ear inward to monitor the communications of ordinary Americans. But how effective is this monumental monitoring effort in countering security threats? The NSA is faced with an enormous and ever-expanding archive of phone calls and e-mail messages. Many experts in data mining and analysis are skeptical about the value of collecting so much information without the ability to understand it, as it may lead to critical clues being lost in the static.
Among those interviewed on "The Spy Factory" are former NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts and officials, many speaking publicly for the first time. Among these is Mark Rossini, the senior FBI agent in the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit. For the first time, Rossini tells how intelligence agency turf wars prevented him from notifying his FBI superiors that Al Qaeda terrorists were heading for the U.S. with valid visas and of their activities once inside America.
Surprisingly, the 9/11 Commission never looked closely into the NSA's role in the broad intelligence breakdown behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. If they had, they would have understood the full extent to which the agency had major pieces of the puzzle but never put them together or disclosed their entire body of knowledge to the CIA and FBI.
In what Bamford calls "one of the largest ironies in the history of American intelligence," he notes that weeks before the attacks, the terrorists were staying in a hotel near NSA headquarters in Maryland, almost within sight of the office of then-NSA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden, who was later appointed director of the CIA by President Bush, was never held accountable for his agency's failure, and after 9/11 he spearheaded the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping activities in the name of making the nation safe from terrorists.
Addressing the question, Are we any safer now than we were before?, Bamford says, "We should have been safe the way it was. NSA had all the information that it needed to stop the 9/11 hijackers. It had laws that allowed it to track the hijackers." Bamford adds that those same laws also protected the privacy of ordinary Americans in ways that have since vanished.
NOVA: The Spy Factory
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/
Watch online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program.html
Program teaser video (2 min low band trailer)
http://media.pbs.org/asxgen/general/windows/wgbh/nova/prev_3602_036.wmv.asx
An eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency (NSA), the PBS program NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the Sept 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent domestic spying program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
In this program, NOVA chronicles the NSA's role in eavesdropping both before and after Sept 11. Drawing on dozens of interviews with agency insiders and probing publicly available sources as well as transcripts of terrorist trials and an FBI chronology of the terrorists' movements, NOVA assembles a detailed picture of events leading up to the Sept 11 attacks and sheds light on the vital data known inside the NSA. The trove of information the NSA had access to in advance included Osama bin Laden's now-disconnected direct satellite phone, which the NSA tapped starting in 1996. Exclusive footage shows the three-story house in Yemen that served as Al Qaeda's communications and logistics headquarters. The NSA was listening in on phone communications to and from the house for years prior to the Sept 11 attack.
Since Sept 11, the agency has turned its giant ear inward to monitor the communications of ordinary Americans. But how effective is this monumental monitoring effort in countering security threats? The NSA is faced with an enormous and ever-expanding archive of phone calls and e-mail messages. Many experts in data mining and analysis are skeptical about the value of collecting so much information without the ability to understand it, as it may lead to critical clues being lost in the static.
Among those interviewed on "The Spy Factory" are former NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts and officials, many speaking publicly for the first time. Among these is Mark Rossini, the senior FBI agent in the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit. For the first time, Rossini tells how intelligence agency turf wars prevented him from notifying his FBI superiors that Al Qaeda terrorists were heading for the U.S. with valid visas and of their activities once inside America.
Surprisingly, the 9/11 Commission never looked closely into the NSA's role in the broad intelligence breakdown behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. If they had, they would have understood the full extent to which the agency had major pieces of the puzzle but never put them together or disclosed their entire body of knowledge to the CIA and FBI.
In what Bamford calls "one of the largest ironies in the history of American intelligence," he notes that weeks before the attacks, the terrorists were staying in a hotel near NSA headquarters in Maryland, almost within sight of the office of then-NSA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden, who was later appointed director of the CIA by President Bush, was never held accountable for his agency's failure, and after 9/11 he spearheaded the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping activities in the name of making the nation safe from terrorists.
Addressing the question, Are we any safer now than we were before?, Bamford says, "We should have been safe the way it was. NSA had all the information that it needed to stop the 9/11 hijackers. It had laws that allowed it to track the hijackers." Bamford adds that those same laws also protected the privacy of ordinary Americans in ways that have since vanished.