Debate Magazine

Obama’s NSA Refuses FOIA Request on Malaysia Flight 370 on Grounds of Classified Info

By Eowyn @DrEowyn

It is now one month 18 days since Malaysia Airlines flight 370, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members, disappeared.

Repeated searches in the south Indian Ocean 2,000 miles southwest from Perth, Australia have found nothing. Speculations abound as to what really happened to MH 370, from the plausible to the bizarre, including:

  • The plane actually landed in Pakistan.
  • The plane actually landed on the U.S. base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
  • Muslims or Iran hijacked the plane.
  • The Israelis hijacked the plane, which (or a plane identical to MH 370) is now in the Tel Aviv airport, to be used in another faked 9-11 attack. (H/t FOTM’s josephbc69)
  • The U.S. military shot down the plane.
  • The Chinese shot down the plane.

All along, I’ve maintained that, given U.S. satellites and the National Security Administration’s (NSA) massive surveillance capabilities, the Obama administration knows precisely what had happened to MH 370, but is not telling. Notice that at no time has the White House offered its radar and satellite tracking information to help in the search.

Now we have evidence that the NSA indeed knows but isn’t telling.

On March 24, 2014, the gutsy and indefatigable attorney, Dr. Orly Taitz, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA for any and all documents relating to missing Malaysian Flight MH 370.

This is the letter Dr. Taitz received in response (click image to enlarge):

NSA FOIA1Here’s the most important paragraph in the NSA’s letter:

We have determined that the fact of the existence or non-existence of the materials you request is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with the Executive Order 13526, as set forth in Sub-paragraph (c) of Section 1.4. Thus your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA which provides that the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept order in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are, in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.

Taitz points out that “Typically when the government does not have any records, it would respond to FOIA request attesting that there are no records in question, however this is not what happened in the case at hand. NSA did not deny existence of the documents, but stated that it is classified.

Executive Order 13526 – Classified National Security Information was issued by Barack Obama on December 29, 2009. Here’s EO 13536′s Section 1.4, Sub-paragraph c:

Sec. 1.4.  Classification Categories.  Information shall not be considered for classification unless its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security in accordance with section 1.2 of this order, and it pertains to one or more of the following:

(c)  intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology;

~Eowyn


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