Bill Binney (Tech Director/NSA) wasn't promoted. He quit just after 9/11 after He leaked that we had all of the intel to discover and piece together 9/11 in our systems, but the administration was prioritizing bulk collecting data over actually analyzing it.
> In September 2002, he, along with J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, asked the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting "millions and millions of dollars" on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze mass collection of data carried on communications networks such as the Internet. Binney had been one of the inventors of an alternative system, ThinThread, which was shelved when Trailblazer was chosen instead. Binney has also been publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens, saying of its expanded surveillance after the September 11, 2001 attacks that "it's better than anything that the KGB, the Stasi, or the Gestapo and SS ever had"[11] as well as noting Trailblazer's ineffectiveness and unjustified high cost compared to the far less intrusive ThinThread.[12] He was furious that the NSA hadn't uncovered the 9/11 plot and stated that intercepts it had collected but not analyzed likely would have garnered timely attention with his leaner more focused system.[9]
Thanks for posting this. Binney is really an unknown who deserves more recognition than we could probably give him -- at least as much as Snowden, if not more.
I'm slightly more inclined to believe that the NSA's pre-9/11 behavior was actually "negligence" (as opposed to something else) than the CIA's, but it's still terrifying that these people missed what they missed. I've been pulled over by the cops on less than the hijackers had during their many, many months in the US.
You're welcome. I'd highly recommend watching the interview I posted, as well as any interview you can find with him or Thomas Drake, who Binney mentions. Both of their handlings have been cited by Snowden as one of the main reasons why he leaked his info to the press vs "officially" going up the chain of command. I wouldn't want to be taking a shower in my house and have them pull the curtain open with a gun pointed to my head, either.
> In September 2002, he, along with J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, asked the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting "millions and millions of dollars" on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze mass collection of data carried on communications networks such as the Internet. Binney had been one of the inventors of an alternative system, ThinThread, which was shelved when Trailblazer was chosen instead. Binney has also been publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens, saying of its expanded surveillance after the September 11, 2001 attacks that "it's better than anything that the KGB, the Stasi, or the Gestapo and SS ever had"[11] as well as noting Trailblazer's ineffectiveness and unjustified high cost compared to the far less intrusive ThinThread.[12] He was furious that the NSA hadn't uncovered the 9/11 plot and stated that intercepts it had collected but not analyzed likely would have garnered timely attention with his leaner more focused system.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...
Here's a really good interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs