Last year Georgetown offered a Journalism seminar investigating the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Led by Asra Nomani, a friend of Pearl’s with whom he was staying when he was kidnapped, and associate dean Barbara Feinman Todd, the class’s goal was to find out more about who was involved in his murder and what Pearl was reporting on when he died.

Although the class ended, the students’ devotion to the project hasn’t. Now, after their FOIA requests were denied, they’re suing the FBI and CIA to obtain records about the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who boasted about killing Pearl.

The students filed dozens of requests, including one to the FBI for communications and documents related to Mohammed’s confession, hoping to find evidence corroborating it.

The FBI response, according to the complaint, was that the bureau could not process the request without a signed privacy waiver from Mohammed.

Todd instant-messaged one of the students, joking, “Do we have KSM’s cell number?”

Todd contends that Mohammed’s privacy is clearly outweighed by the public interest in having the records disclosed and that as a Pakistani national, Mohammed is not entitled to privacy protection under federal law.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman wrote in an e-mail that “the Department strives to strike the right balance between transparency in our operations while at the same time protecting sensitive information critical to the national security.”

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under News, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.