|
TKS [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ home | archives | email ] SHAFFER ON CNN
CNN finally put up the transcript of its interview with Shaffer. They oh-so-helpfully titled the link to the transcript "null."
Anyway, the highlights:
S. O'BRIEN: But the 9/11 commissioners did their report a while back.
SHAFFER: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: I mean, why isn't this six months ago, even earlier than that? Why now?
SHAFFER: Well, I understand. I can't address the report, other than I know I provided information to Mr. Zelicow (ph) in Bagram of October of '03. That information was significant in the fact that in their 12 August statement, they talk about that he called back immediately, requesting more information. I was asked to talk to him in January of '03, where I called his office — I mean January '04, where I called his office, and they changed their mind about talking to me.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, I'm — forgive me for a moment.
SHAFFER: Go ahead.
S. O'BRIEN: I want to kind of walk through this slowly and clearly.
SHAFFER: Sure.
S. O'BRIEN: You sort of are pointing out that things were mired and bogged down in dates. But when this was not part of the 9/11 Commission's report, why didn't you say, "This is ridiculous, I must go public now, because there was a crucial drop in information, someone dropped the ball, I need to tell the American public?" Why not do that?
SHAFFER: Right. There were two reasons.
To be totally honest with you, we believed that there may have been a classified annex. Not being on the commission, not being — not working at that level, I had no way of knowing. I had to believe that there must have been some reason that that information was not provided to the public, either by follow-on information — operations of some sort that related to this or something else.
S. O'BRIEN: OK. That explains it for me, then, at least.
A bit more about his dealings with the Commission:
S. O'BRIEN: The 9/11 commissioners says they don't recall Mohamed Atta's name coming up in their discussion. They also say that his name does not appear in any of the briefings they had before they filed their report.
SHAFFER: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: Are they — are they — you say you've talked to them specifically with that name. Are they lying?
SHAFFER: I can't — I can't answer that question. What I know is that their statement on the 12th of August is wrong.
I never mentioned anything about a human asset network being turned off by the (INAUDIBLE). That's one of their statements that they claim I made. I never said that.
And the other thing they say that I said was that I talked about Able Danger being a project in Afghanistan. I never said that.
So if they got those two points wrong, I don't know what else they got wrong. The only thing they got right, basically, was that — that there was information about this network that related to the fact that they were interested in it. And they — Mr. Zelicow's (ph) own admission, the next paragraph of their 12 August statement, says they called back immediately after talking to me, which would mean they heard something that I said which resonated.
The other thing is Mr. Zelicow (ph) himself gave me his card and asked me to contact him upon my return from the deployment. And I did contact him in January of '04. That's where I was essentially blown off.
I called him. They said they wanted to talk to me. I waited a week, called him back. And they said, "No, we don't need to talk to you now."
Shaffer seems to be suggesting that the 9/11 Commission was asking the wrong people for information about Able Danger:
S. O'BRIEN: But I was essentially asking you if they were lying, which is sort of a yes or no answer there.
SHAFFER: I can't — I'm just letting you know what I — what I said. I said, specifically, that we, as through the Able Danger process, discovered two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta. Now — and I — that was, to me, significant, in that they actually pulled me aside after the meeting and said, "Please come talk to us and give us more details."
Now, back to the information that DOD passed to them. DOD passed two containers, approximately briefcase-sized containers over to them in the February-March time frame of '04. That is not one-twentieth of the information which was available out there on Able Danger and the project.
And plus, they asked DIA for it. It was not a DIA project. And I think they asked the wrong questions of DOD in some cases. And I know for a fact right not DOD is trying to get to the bottom of this.
I spoke with DOD leadership yesterday. They are working hard to come to the bottom — come to terms with what the facts are.
S. O'BRIEN: And I know the Pentagon obviously investigating your claims, along with many other people as well.
SHAFFER: Yes, absolutely.
[Posted 08/17 10:56 AM]
|
