Really interesting reading: the "Phoenix memo"
 

We've all heard about it.

Now we can read the uncensored part of the whole thing

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0412042phoenix1.html

If any more of that was blacked out, they may as well have scanned a piece of desk blotter!

I have a little background in this one, let me tell some more details: You see, on the ****** of the 3rd of *****, ****, I sat down to ******** with my good friends, J****** and B*****. We were discussing, as you might imagine, ***********, a topic of some ********. The great difficulty, of course, was whether or not a team of highly trained hummingbirds could be trained to sing in symphony to reproduce other musical instruments. J********* was of the opinion that ********* was probably a *********, but Hillary ********* was definitely ********. Then B******* asked the critical question -- Does a midget thrown into a dark room travel faster than one thrown into a lighted room? Does it matter if he's an African or Australian midget? What about the *********** effect?


Dan, of too much coffee ...

They had to black out the names, because, as it turns out...none of the people that the Phoenix office were investigating were guilty. They somehow came up with the right answer with the wrong information.

djmcmath: Thanks for the clarification!

From what I can read, it looks like a real red flag. I can understand the after-the-fact frustration of the agent who wrote it.

In the real (pre hindsight) world, I'm sure it was one of many memos and lots of agent communication circulating at the time. It's too bad it wasn't the only terrorism alert message of the Summer of '01.

The really silly thing is that I can go and talk to my local security officer and get dozens of terrorism bulletins dated inside the last week or two, all of which look remarkably similar to that one. In hindsight, it seems totally obvious -- OBL is sending hundreds of students to US flight schools! There were all these memos! Several agents predicted this! In foresight, however, I'm looking at travelling to say, Ireland, and reading dozens of "possible terror alerts," none of which can be taken too seriously. A group of hostile chimpanzees hired by OBL supporters is rumored to be preparing to conduct potential assaults upon blonde-haired males at some unspecified time in the future? An agent in Dublin reports that he might have heard some guy talking about OBL in a bar, and thinks that maybe he's going to try and fill the Thames with red food coloring to simulate blood? Watch for suicide bombers, check your vehicle for explosives, don't announce yourself as American Military, blah blah blah. It all looks the same after a while.

Trying to be humorous, and coming across as more cynical, I think. Sorry.

Dan