Whether the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented if U.S. intelligence services had been using the best data-collection system available is the provocative question raised by Friedrich Moser’s documentary about Bill Binney, a National Security Agency analyst and mathematical wiz who during the 1990s was successfully developing a program called ThinThread, which was designed to identify significant connections from the mountains of material flooding into the agency every day. The argument made by Binney, a soft-spoken man in a wheelchair—as well as other colleagues interviewed—is that Binney’s digitally-based system would have isolated connections among the hijackers from the metadata that might have allowed the agency to foil their plot. But his project was eliminated in 2000 by NSA director Michael Hayden in favor of an inferior, analog-based system called Trailblazer because, according to Binney, Hayden and another agency official had a financial interest in the company developing it. Binney further emphasizes that ThinThread included privacy protocols that would have prevented the widespread collection of metadata on average American citizens (which caused a scandal about U.S. intelligence operations). Moser’s film is admittedly one-sided, relying entirely on assertions by Binney and his supportive colleagues, while also employing dramatic re-enactments and throbbing music to give an atmosphere of pervasive corruption. But while it cannot be considered conclusive, neither does it descend to the category of rabid conspiracy-theorizing, and it certainly raises questions worth pondering. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)
A Good American
(2016) 100 min. DVD: $50 ($125 w/PPR): public libraries; $295 w/PPR: colleges & universities. DRA. Collective Eye Films. Closed captioned. Volume 33, Issue 5
A Good American
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