This podcast series is a shameless rip-off of my @TheAtlantic story from last April. No credit is given and the creator did zero original reporting. He even mispronounces the main character's name through all 8 episodes. (It's "kuh-SEE," not "KEY-see.") 🧵 open.spotify.com/show/36jBtvexU… This is the obvious source material, which took me 9 years to report and write. Every key detail in the podcast comes directly from the story’s text, without any attribution. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Less than two days 'til @TheAtlantic publishes a story I've been working on since 2012. Time to start a thread of cryptic teasers.

Yesterday, federal prosecutors unsealed indictments against three associates of Tyler Barriss, the notorious swatter whose story I told for @WIRED. The defendants are alleged to have conspired with Barriss to carry out numerous swattings and bomb threats. justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/t… The indictments highlight just how casual the defendants were about terrorizing total strangers, and how little they feared getting caught despite using unsecured communications tools (e.g. Twitter DMs).

I have some profoundly tragic news to report, related to the story I wrote about the death of Andrew Finch. (1/x) wired.com/story/swatting… Andrew’s sister, Adrianne, died in a car accident in 2002. She left behind two young children, Francis and Adelina. Though just a teenager at the time, Andrew helped raise his niece and nephew; he was their father figure.

Tyler Barriss, the instigator of the swatting that led to the death of Andrew Finch, is scheduled to plead guilty to an array of federal charges today. (1/x) kansas.com/news/nation-wo… Though he will appear in federal court in Wichita, where Finch was killed, Barriss will be pleading guilty to charges from the Central District of California and the District of Columbia, too. The California case is the most sprawling. wired.com/story/feds-hit…

Tyler Barriss, the swatter whose exploits I detailed in the November issue of @WIRED, just got hit with a vast new array of federal charges--this time in the Central District of California. wired.com/story/feds-hit… The seven oldest charges date back to the fall of 2015. They all involve bomb threats made to high schools and colleges that Barriss' online "Halo" friends attended.

This parallel is something I thought about while writing “The Skies.” Hijackers often spoke of how they’d been inspired by coverage of past incidents—especially live TV reports from airport tarmacs where negotiations were taking place. A classic example is Paul Joseph Cini…(1/x)

https://twitter.com/ThinkTenk/status/1042932024552517632

Cini came up with his scheme while watching a newscast about a failed hijacking. He might have gotten away with his plan if he hadn’t gotten completely wasted while seizing Air Canada Flight 812. skyjackeroftheday.tumblr.com/post/530364645…

When I wrote "The Skies Belong to Us," a book about the hijacking epidemic of the '60s/'70s, mass shootings were very much on my mind. (1/x) After the first four American hijackings occurred in 1961, the Senate held a hearing about the crisis. FAA chief Najeeb Halaby testified.