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| Transcript of CNN interview with LTC Anthony Shaffer |
| 2005-08-17 |
| Soledad O'Brien: A military intelligence officer says he tried to warn the FBI about an al Qaeda cell a full year before the 9/11 attacks, but was prevented from passing on information. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was a member of a unit called Able Danger, and he's just now going public with what he says he told the 9/11 Commission. Colonel Shaffer joins us from our Washington bureau this morning. Good morning. Thanks for being with us. LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER, U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE: Good morning. Thank you, Soledad. S. O'BRIEN: We're coming up on four years to the anniversary of 9/11. Why are you going public now? SHAFFER: I understand this will stir up a lot of very difficult memories for folks. And that is not why we're doing this, obviously. I was tasked by the Navy to look at bringing back some of the aspects regarding the technology of the Able Danger capability earlier this year. Through our research and coordination with Congress, with Congressman Curt Weldon, we came to find that the information we provided to the 9/11 Commission had never got to the commissioners. Subsequent to that being discovered, Congressman Weldon and his staff did additional research, and we came to find there was a significant amount of information that was totally deleted or not provided to the actual commissioners. 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. You've claimed that this is information that you had about a terrorist a full year before 9/11. SHAFFER: Right. S. O'BRIEN: Mohamed Atta, who was obviously part of this team of hijackers. Where did this information that he was a terrorist linked to al Qaeda, where did this come from that you had that nobody else in the security branch, as far as we can tell, had that information? SHAFFER: I didn't have the information. I was part of the task force which supported Able Danger. What I did was I married the land information warfare activity, LIMA, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, an Army unit, Army capability, to the special operations command for the purposes of this exercise, this targeting exercise of al Qaeda. What the LIWA did -- and it was their ability to go through massive amounts of open-source data, 2.5 terabytes, and look for patterns that related to previously-known terrorists. It was that information then which popped up... S. O'BRIEN: So, by trolling the Internet and LexusNexus, things like that, I think that's what you mean by open source data? Am I right about that? SHAFFER: Open source -- anything that's not a classified database. We're talking about commercial databases, financial databases. Anything that's out there that relates to the real world. And let me be specific on this. S. O'BRIEN: And his name pops up? SHAFFER: Well, yes, because terrorists live in the real world. As we recognize from the London bombings, there's a picture of the terrorist in a whitewater rafting trip. They live in the real world just like we do. They plan in the real world. S. O'BRIEN: What were those documents that -- give me a sense of what kinds of documents targeted Mohamed Atta a year before 9/11 as a potential terrorist. SHAFFER: For a couple of different reasons, I'm not going -- I'm not going to get into very specifics for this, because, again, we're trying to figure out a way that we can continue to do this. And I don't want to give away anything that someone can use against us. S. O'BRIEN: But it's open sourcing, right? I mean, so it would be available to anyone. SHAFFER: The sourcing, I've covered the sourcing, which is essentially open source. Now, how we arrayed that and how we use the technology -- you know, first off, I'm not the technician. I'm an intelligence officer relating to human intelligence. I was one of the folks who was the -- one of the managers in the process. What the process actually did, though, was take this information, using advanced algorithms, looking for patterns, and it popped up this information based on all the information that was available on the open source -- out of open source systems on these individuals. 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." Now, Soledad, I'm sorry. I forgot your first part of the question you asked before. S. O'BRIEN: You know, we're actually kind of running out of time. SHAFFER: OK. 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. S. O'BRIEN: And lots of twists and turns, but essentially, I think I understand what you're claiming now. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer joining us this morning. Thanks for your time. SHAFFER: Thank you, ma'am. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 S. O'BRIEN: "We're coming up on four years to the anniversary of 9/11. Why are you going public now?" Yea, moron! Don't you know that the Dem'cts are trying to win an election and looking weak on national defense gives a negative mindset? |
| Posted by: Poison Reverse 2005-08-17 16:39 |