Washington, D.C., February 10, 2005 - February
10, 2005 - As a result of a Freedom of Information Act appeal
filed by the National Security Archive, the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) corrected its October
2004 blunder of withholding the names and numbers
of aviation warnings known as Information Circulars that were
widely cited and quoted in the best-selling 9/11 Commission
Report. In spite of this additional material, the released
TSA documents continue to withhold details that were declassified
in the recently released 9/11
Commission Staff Report on the pre-9/11 failings of the FAA
that was the subject of a front page New
York Times
article by Eric Lichtblau today.
The release of documents on appeal has resulted in the disclosure
of only one sentence of substance, a comment in the June
22, 2001 Information Circular, that states, "such
an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United
States, remains a concern." The sentence was released by
TSA on appeal because it can be found in Chapter 8 of the 9/11
Commission Report on page 256.
The TSA
continues to affirm its decision to withhold all other material
in the Information Circulars as Sensitive Security
Information (SSI), despite additional citations of the requested
documents in the 9/11
Commission Staff Report, which is highly critical
of the Federal Aviation Administration for failing to establish
better security practices in response to incoming terrorism warnings.
"These Information Circulars continue to qualify as dubious
secrets," said Barbara Elias, the FOIA coordinator at the
National Security Archive. "It seems clear that the Transportation
Security Administration did not review these documents on the
basis of the information they contain, they simply redacted everything
they could legally redact."
"The government is still ducking the real question, which
is whether the secrecy about these warnings actually makes us
safer," said Thomas Blanton, the National Security Archive
director.