Who is Rich Blee? Podcast
In 2011, three years before Serial, Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy created an early true crime investigative podcast. The 90-minute one-off garnered headlines at the time after a transcript shared in advance with the CIA for comment resulted in Duffy and Nowosielski receiving a threat of federal prosecution if they revealed the name of the mysterious redheaded alleged human rights abuser at the center of their story.
Though they censored the name as "Frances" in the podcast, her true identity, Alfreda Bikowsky, did ultimately come out on their web site. The Intercept co-founder Glen Greenwald would later tweet that this podcast was "fantastic and brave."
Who Is Rich Blee? is a dogged search for accountability within America's Central Intelligence Agency over the failure of its small Al Qaeda office to prevent the September 11th attacks. At the center of this spy intrigue story are Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the lead hijackers who CIA station-runner Rich Blee and others seemingly hid from the FBI for more than year after they learned they had entered the U.S. Why? The answers come from a collection of insiders.
Who is Rich Blee in the Press
Behind the Scenes Insights from Salon
On Sept. 8, 2011, a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency sent a message to our joint work email account. We did not expect the CIA to be thrilled that we wanted to tell the story of their pre-9/11 failures, revealing names of employees working from their headquarters in the process, but we certainly did not expect to be threatened….