By Michael Pollick
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Relatives of 9/11 victims are eagerly watching the legal struggle over information held by the FBI concerning a Saudi Arabian family in Sarasota with possible ties to terrorists, even as calls in Congress ramp up for more disclosure about how the attackers
By Rebecca LaFlure, Center for Public Integrity
Cooling tower at MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Lab, in October 2009. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
At a research facility some two dozen miles from the White House, government scientists operate a nuclear reactor burning uranium that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. A similar research reactor sits just blocks from where the suspected Boston Marathon bombers gunned down a campus policeman. A third reactor is located in the Midwest, less than a mile from a 71,000-seat college football stadium.
Yet more than a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, these facilities “are particularly vulnerable to sabotage attack” and are not required to meet tougher standards used by the military to protect its weapons-grade uranium from terrorists, say the authors of a new Pentagon-funded study.
By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org
A mass of documents detailing the Tampa area connection to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, many of which may have never been made public, are stored out of sight in the FBI’s Tampa field office.
By Justin Elliott, ProPublica
Hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar, foreground, passes through security at Dulles International Airport hours before American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon
In defending the NSA’s sweeping collection of Americans’ phone call records, Obama administration officials have repeatedly pointed out how it could have helped thwart the 9/11 attacks: If only the surveillance program been in place before Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. authorities would have been able to identify one of the future hijackers who was living in San Diego.
Last weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney invoked the same argument.
By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org
A group representing 6,600 survivors and relatives of those killed and injured in the 9/11 attacks called on the FBI Thursday to “come clean” about its investigation of Saudis in Florida who may have aided the terrorist hijackers.