NIST releases Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests very reluctantly — and only when it’s sued.

That is AE911Truth researcher David Cole’s conclusion after making numerous attempts since 9/11 to extract information from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This secretive federal agency perpetually ignores Cole’s requests, though what he seeks — and NIST suppresses — should be available to the public.  Here’s where you come in!

As a result of NIST’s inaction on Cole’s latest inquiry, AE911Truth needs to hire an attorney to file a lawsuit. This proposed action stems from AE911Truth’s conviction that the 9/11 research community must have access to the same unfiltered evidence that government officials had when creating their reports on the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings. In a constitutional Republic, it is the duty of citizens to monitor their public servants, including, as Cole puts it, “checking their math.”

A brief background on our upcoming lawsuit: In 2011, Cole asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the records of its investigation on the World Trade Center.

At first, FEMA denied having any records, then it claimed to have turned over everything to another federal agency — namely, NIST. FEMA referred Cole’s FOIA request to NIST, and NIST eventually released a tiny portion of the records. But that arrangement between the two agencies wasn’t legal under the FOIA statute, which mandates that agencies maintain control over their own records.

Thus, the lawsuit by AE911Truth will ask the court to order both NIST and FEMA to release all of the WTC records gathered by FEMA during its 2001-2002 WTC investigation — text and images that go above and beyond the selective records FEMA chose to put in its May 2002 report. The complete record includes all evidence gathered by the various contractors that FEMA employed as part of its investigation. Cole estimates that the total exceeds 490,000 documents, videos, photographs, and any other format that FEMA or its contractors used.

Here’s where you come in. To pay an attorney to file a lawsuit, we need your help. Please pitch in today to support this $8,000 project. We hope to accomplish our fund-raising goal in two days. Can we count on you to meet that target?