FOIA Lawsuit: Thousands of 9/11 Photos and Videos Released

The International Center for 9/11 Studies has secured the release of hundreds of hours of video footage and tens of thousands of photographs used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for its investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7. This material is being released to the Center under the Freedom of Information Act, in response to a lawsuit the Center filed against NIST.

We are currently looking at the best ways to distribute these materials to interested researchers and journalists around the world. Because of the huge volume of data, we are working on a wiki-style website to facilitate review and discussion of any interesting items that are discovered by researchers.  Justin Keogh, our Chief Technical Officer, is preparing the website and materials for release. The first batch of materials we are releasing is a group of video clips sent to us on an external hard disk drive labeled “NIST WTC Investigation Cumulus Video Clips.” We believe NIST entered these clips into a searchable database called the Cumulus database, and used them as the basis for the investigation and reports.  Although the Center has extremely limited resources with which it can review this mountain of data, several interesting items have already been discovered.