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Deep Dive: A Good American (2015)

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A Good American
A Good American is a documentary that focuses on William Binney, a former NSA official who became a whistleblower after the September 11 attacks. The film presents Binney's claims that his work on a surveillance program called ThinThread could have prevented the attacks, but was ignored by high-ranking officials at the NSA, including Gen. Michael Hayden. The narrative is built around interviews with Binney, other former NSA officials, and congressional staffers, along with reenactments that illustrate the events surrounding the development of ThinThread and the subsequent decision to pursue the more costly and intrusive Trailblazer Project. The documentary argues that the NSA wasted significant resources on Trailblazer, which lacked the privacy safeguards of ThinThread. Binney and his colleagues, including J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, sought an investigation into the NSA's practices, claiming that their alternative system was more effective and less intrusive. The film critiques the agency's decisions and suggests that the failure to implement ThinThread contributed to the inability to analyze crucial intelligence data in the lead-up to the attacks.

Why Watch

  • •Meet whistleblower William Binney and his story.
  • •Find out why ThinThread was shelved before 9/11.
  • •See reenactments of critical NSA decisions.

Did You Know

•William Binney resigned from the NSA shortly after September 11, 2001.
•ThinThread was developed as a less expensive alternative to Trailblazer.
•Gen. Michael Hayden vetoed the deployment of ThinThread just three weeks before 9/11.
•The documentary has a score of 63 on Metacritic based on reviews.

Perfect For

NSA historyWhistleblower storiesIntelligence community