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ZAID

Started by krazykat-migration,

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Jeffreykli

Jeffreykli

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Mark,

 

It was a good interview, although too short. I certainly am interested in finding out more.

 

BTW, my fiancee says to wear a white shirt and a dark jacket...it'll make your shoulders look broader. Although compared to your client, I'm not sure anything will help. poke2.gif

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Joanna

Joanna

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I saw it, too. You both looked great and did a great job, saying some very thought-provoking things. I was especially happy that at the end, you mentioned the 4 who weren't part of 9/11 -- and wondered what they were up to. That was the first thing that popped into my mind, and I kept urging one of you to talk about that. When you did, you got a big whoot! from me!

 

-- Joanna

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Though it has errors in it, and the cross-talk blurs out the conversation, here is the transcript from the MSNBC broadcast on ABLE DANGER.

 

At least two, and perhaps three, of my clients will be testifying before the Senate Judicary Committee at a hearing scheduled for September 14, 2005.

 

SHOW: HARDBALL 7:00 PM EST

 

August 26, 2005 Friday

 

TRANSCRIPT: 082601cb.461

 

SECTION: NEWS; International

 

LENGTH: 7888 words

 

HEADLINE: HARDBALL For August 26, 2005

 

BYLINE: David Shuster, Chris Matthews

 

GUESTS: Mark Zaid, Anthony Shaffer, T. Boone Pickens, Anthony Principi, Amber Pruett, Tammy Pruett

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

 

Two defense officers say that a military intelligence unit known as Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as potential al Qaeda threats more than a year before 9/11, but military lawyers prevented them from sharing this information with the FBI. Is the Pentagon to blame, then, for failing to prevent 9/11?

 

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was the first to come forward with his information. He served as the liaison officer between the Able Danger unit and the Defense Intelligence Agency. And Mark Zaid is his attorney.

 

Colonel, let me ask you this. In real simple terms, could 9/11 have been prevent by the information your unit had in its possession?

 

LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER, FORMER ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: There`s no way to tell if that could have happened or not. But I do believe that, had we been able to pass the information to the FBI, it would have given us a fighting chance. That`s the best I can describe it.

 

MATTHEWS: Tell me how you learned about Mohamed Atta.

 

SHAFFER: This information...

 

MATTHEWS: And when.

 

SHAFFER: We found out about Mohamed Atta by his links, essentially, to put in it simple layman`s term, profiling, using open-source data, regarding the travel and association of certain Muslim men and certain radical clerics. And this was done through open Internet completely by J.D. Smith. He came forward today.

 

There`s -- he is now on the record talking about exactly how he did this using advanced data tools, data mining, purchasing of data off the Internet through brokers, and then using multiple analytical tools to refute or confirm links. Again, this was a six-month process to come up with this information.

 

MATTHEWS: What was it that identified him as a terrorist, though?

 

SHAFFER: Describing him as a -- he was found to be directly linked to radical Muslim clerics.

 

MATTHEWS: But he had no rap sheet, did he?

 

SHAFFER: No, he did not. And that was one of the things that was -- the beauties of this whole technology. We were able to find these guys and their affiliations and associations a year before 9/11. Nobody else seems to have found this information.

 

MATTHEWS: Is there a formula -- because this sounds like "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise, the movie -- where you can predict a crime is going to happen based upon information?

 

SHAFFER: That was one of the keys of the way...

 

MATTHEWS: Do you believe you can?

 

SHAFFER: They were using the criteria of the World Trade Center one bomber.

 

As you recall, in `93, the World Trade Center one -- was bombed. They took like eight points of data out of -- which was common to all those individuals, take that data then, bounce it off the larger database, looking for profiles which meet up with the original set. That`s how we found the linkage. That, plus the association of Atta and these other individuals with the radical clerics who were traveling and against the -- for better or for worse. The Muslim clerics were being used as command- and-control of that operation.

 

MATTHEWS: Again using the "Minority Report" parallel, if you know someone is going to commit a crime, why don`t you tell law enforcement officials?

 

SHAFFER: We attempted to do that. And that`s one of the issues...

 

MATTHEWS: How hard? How hard did you try?

 

SHAFFER: I can`t tell you. We tried as -- to the point of where we thought this was the most important thing. There was no...

 

MATTHEWS: What`s to stop you from dropping the dime on Mohamed Atta if you think the guy looks suspicious, just going to the nearest phone, call up and say, here`s a tip? This guy, Mohamed Atta, is a dangerous man. He fits the pattern, the profile, of a terrorist. And we`re afraid he is going to strike.

 

SHAFFER: He wasn`t the only one that we discovered...

 

MATTHEWS: How many were in that category?

 

SHAFFER: There were probably about eight total that we had suspicion of.

 

MATTHEWS: Well, Why not do eight people like that? That` where -- that`s not a big chunk of people.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

SHAFFER: Because that was where the Able Danger operations officer approached me and said, we have these individuals the lawyers have told us we can`t look at we have to do something about.

 

That`s where I came in to it, because I had a relationship with the FBI running a similar operation. So, I tried to broker meetings between the Able Danger individuals in Tampa and the FBI. That`s where it went wrong. That`s where we were stopped from providing the information.

 

MATTHEWS: Mark, what law prevents your client from telling his counterparts at the FBI that there`s a dangerous guy out there that might blow up some things?

 

MARK ZAID, ATTORNEY FOR ANTHONY SHAFFER: Well, apparently, the concern within the military, similar to what was seen with the Justice Department wall, was that the military could not conduct intelligence operations or gathering of information on U.S. citizens or even U.S. person, meaning individuals here in the United States, foreigners, but who were lawfully here, as most or some of the hijackers were.

 

MATTHEWS: Where did that law come from, or rule?

 

ZAID: I`m not entirely clear on that.

 

MATTHEWS: I mean, why do we collect intelligence information if we`re not going to use it?

 

ZAID: Well, that`s a good question.

 

I mean, part of it may come back in 19th century with Posse Comitatus and the military is not allowed to do law enforcement operations.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: I could give you a list of places to go buy Christmas trees, with the idea that you go buy a Christmas tree. Why would you collect data on locating bad guys if you are not going to pick them up?

 

ZAID: Well, that was the question.

 

And there was a division within the military as to what they can do and how long they can do it. And that`s why the program was shut down. Most -- a lot of these questions should be directed at the Army, as to why was the program shut down in early 2001, when it was producing the results that it did?

 

MATTHEWS: You`re not the only one speaking out. Navy Captain Scott Philpott, is he saying the same thing you are?

 

SHAFFER: He has gone on the record backing up everything that`s been said about him knowing about Atta and what we were doing regarding Able Danger, yes.

 

ZAID: It`s not only Philpott.

 

We have now -- there`s been several have gone on the record. But having talked to other team members and who have also talked to other team members, there are now up to at least a dozen team members who are supportive...

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: Why are the two chairman of the 9/11 Commission denying the value of what you`re saying?

 

SHAFFER: I think Richard Ben-Veniste said it the best the other day during an interview on CNBC on the Donny Deutsch show.

 

MATTHEWS: Yes.

 

SHAFFER: When Donny Deutsch asked him, why is it you never checked out, as the commissioners, Colonel Shaffer`s story? His answer was very telling. He said, we had no technology or ability to actually check on what the colonel was telling us. We had -- "The technology to do so no longer exists" -- unquote.

 

So, that was the key. The technology we used to get this information does not exist at the time they were doing the report, the 9/11 Commission research, nor does it exist now. So, that is the key. They couldn`t verify what we were saying.

 

ZAID: Chris, the problem is, the Defense Department didn`t give them the data that was necessary. And we now know that the Army destroyed a large amount of that data in 2001. And that`s another question that needs to be asked. Why?

 

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you.

 

Nine-Eleven Commissioner Thomas Kean is one of those people that is denying the value of what you`re saying right here.

 

SHAFFER: Well, I -- sir, I can only tell you what I know and what I talked to the 9/11 Commission about. And how an offensive operation aimed at looking at al Qaeda two years in advance of 9/11 is somehow not historically relevant, I don`t understand.

 

MATTHEWS: So, you knew the name Mohamed Atta? You knew the guy was dangerous?

 

SHAFFER: We knew that he was linked to radical Muslim clerics and he was of concern, by the fact that the lawyers told us we couldn`t even do intelligence collection against him, yes.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: I want to come back and talk more about this. I think everybody has got to figure out watching this show how we can pick people ahead of time, because I was stunned.

 

The day of 9/11, the day after, all of a sudden, within 24 hours, I see pictures in the newspapers of every guy who did it. Where did those pictures come from?

 

SHAFFER: Exactly.

 

MATTHEWS: How did we know all that so fast? Usual suspects, obviously.

 

More with Anthony Shaffer and Mark Zaid when we return.

 

And a reminder: The political debate is 24/7 here at Hardblogger, our political blog Web site. Follow all the action on the hottest political stories each day. Just go to our Web site, HARDBALL.MSNBC.com.

 

This is HARDBALL on MSNBC.

 

MATTHEWS: We are back with Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, who says that a military team had linked Mohamed Atta to an al Qaeda cell more than a year before 9/11. We are also joined by his lawyer, Mark Zaid.

 

Is the federal government -- I mean, you are going to be asked this the rest of your life, my friend, Lieutenant Colonel. You`re going to be asked the rest of your life, did we blow it?

 

SHAFFER: I think we did blow it.

 

I mean, any time you have information which is critical to any given military target and somehow it is not used properly, you have blown it. I mean, there`s no -- there`s no way -- there`s no way too put too fine a point on it.

 

The question is now, how do we learn from this and what else did the 9/11 Commission miss? And how do we go back and try to find those other little misses of information? And one of the things I need to add here, Chris, is that, like you pointed out, the "Minority Report" paradigm here. These guys, these terrorists live in the real world. If you recall, the London bombing, the day that -- weeks before the London bombing, there`s a picture of these guys out on a white-water rafting trip together.

 

That -- I swear, I believe in my heart of hearts, that was their final planning meeting. That means that they live in the real world. What we need to do is find out through the links who they associate with and how those links can be traced back to what they`re doing. Unlike you and I, who have patterns in our life, they have a different pattern. And that pattern is detectable. And I think that`s where we need to go with this.

 

MATTHEWS: so, you believe we can get enough basic hard facts on people that might be on a long list of -- a watch list -- to narrow down to those who have conducted themselves in a certain way that fits the pattern of people about to commit terrorism?

 

SHAFFER: Not even a watch list.

 

MATTHEWS: And we can do it?

 

SHAFFER: Not even a watch list. We`re talking about, in some cases with the London bombers, citizens who were totally above board, looked perfectly normal.

 

MATTHEWS: Yes.

 

SHAFFER: There`s -- but there was a pattern there.

 

MATTHEWS: I love this with this formula. Don`t give it away, though.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: Keep that formula to yourself.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: Because they might figure it out and operate differently.

 

But...

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

SHAFFER: Right.

 

MATTHEWS: It sounds like good standard police work. Did you notice anything different?

 

SHAFFER: Yes.

 

MATTHEWS: People fit patterns. People go to neighborhoods they don`t normally go to. Look for them as the killer.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this.

 

What -- just personally, when you started to see this grim looking picture of Mohamed Atta flashed all over the TV screen, all over the newspapers, having picked him up as one of your eight suspects, what did you think?

 

SHAFFER: I was shocked, just like, you know...

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: You might have said, we were right?

 

SHAFFER: We were going down the right path. And that was my concern.

 

And, as a matter of fact, my colleagues and I got together. As a matter of fact, one of my former investigators came forward recently and said, I remember you talking to me about this a week after 9/11.

 

MATTHEWS: Yes.

 

SHAFFER: We all realized that we had these guys.

 

And then we started asking some questions to ourselves. Why was Able Danger, why was this whole technology piece turned off four months before the 9/11 attacks? In the spring of 2001, it was dismantled, all, completely...

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: You know what? It sounds like me watching the CIA leak case. I know all these people involved, all the suspects. And when their names start popping up in the reports, I go, yes, I figured that was one of them.

 

(LAUGHTER)

 

MATTHEWS: But you`re much closer to a horror story, because you, the rest of your life, will know that you could have, couldn`t you, have gone nuts when you saw Mohamed Atta`s face?

 

SHAFFER: We...

 

MATTHEWS: And said, this guy is really dangerous. I don`t care how many rules I break. I`m going to stop him.

 

SHAFFER: We didn`t know -- Chris, in our defense, we did not know al Qaeda was such a -- that level of threat before 9/11. We did not.

 

MATTHEWS: You didn`t know they would knock -- tried to knock down the World Trade Center in `93?

 

SHAFFER: We did. I`m not saying we didn`t know that.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: And only came within a few cinder blocks of doing it?

 

SHAFFER: That`s why Able Danger was created. And, again, look at the title, Able Danger. There was a knowledge that these guys were dangerous. The Cole Attack happened after Able Danger started.

 

MATTHEWS: OK.

 

Quick, just to finish up , because everybody is curious about this.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: This is an iconic event in our history.

 

Of those eight people that you fingered as possible dangers based on a pattern of behaviors...

 

SHAFFER: Right.

 

MATTHEWS: ... set behaviors that you`ve identified as indicative of what`s coming in this guy, how many of them were involved, three?

 

SHAFFER: There was a total of four, by my recollection.

 

MATTHEWS: So, you had four out of eight.

 

SHAFFER: That was -- we had four of the group.

 

MATTHEWS: That`s batting .500.

 

SHAFFER: And we believe that, had that information -- the fact that these guys were linked to al Qaeda leadership, we think that information may have been useful to the FBI

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: You think, if you had had a perfect relations with the FBI -- tell me the law here, Mark. If the colonel had called up the FBI or his -- through the right channels, pick up these guys. These guys are dangerous. We have got a set of information about them that says these guys are about to pull something big. Would the law have been able to pick them up?

 

ZAID: My understanding of the preclusion that the military had, it would have been problematic from a law enforcement standpoint. Also understand...

 

MATTHEWS: There`s no probable cause. There`s no reason to believe...

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

ZAID: They did not have that type of data.

 

MATTHEWS: You can`t use prior restraint in the law?

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

ZAID: They only had links. They had associations that this person was hanging out with this person, was shopping at this place, was attending this mosque, this church, whatever.

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

ZAID: They only had that type of links, which, in these type of operations, as we now know publicly from how al Qaeda operated, that was how they conducted their planning.

 

Now, the real grave concern is, they identified, OK, three or four of them. What happened to the other people on the list? Just because they weren`t participating in 9/11, are they planning something now? If they identified 50 percent of them at that time, where is the data to look at these people on the list now?

 

(CROSSTALK)

 

MATTHEWS: Thank you, Colonel.

 

Thank you, Mark Zaid.

 

Join us again on Monday night at 7:00 Eastern for more HARDBALL. We will talk to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on how the are preparing to support Judge Roberts during his confirmation hearings, also about Trent`s new book. Also, next week, comedian and TV host Bill Maher.

 

Up next, "COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN," hosted tonight by my friend Chris Jansing, and more on the damage left by Hurricane Katrina.

 

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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National Public Radio (NPR)

 

SHOW: Morning Edition 11:00 AM EST NPR

 

September 9, 2005 Friday

 

LENGTH: 1245 words

 

HEADLINE: A look at state secrets privilege

 

ANCHORS: RENEE MONTAGNE

 

REPORTERS: JACKIE NORTHAM

 

BODY:

 

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

 

The government is classifying documents at a faster rate than it has in years. And at the same time, the administration is more often using something called the state secrets privilege in cases involving national security. This tool could bring court cases challenging the government's anti-terrorism policies to a screeching halt. In her second report on classified information, NPR's national security correspondent Jackie Northam says the State Secrets Privilege first came to prominence some 50 years ago.

 

JACKIE NORTHAM reporting:

 

On an October afternoon in 1948, an Air Force B-29 bomber took off from Warner Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. It was a top secret mission to test highly sophisticated radar equipment. On board were nine military crew members and four civilian engineers. Shortly after the plane hit its cruising altitude of 20,000 feet, something went terribly wrong. The B-29 crashed into the Georgia countryside. Nine people, including three civilians, died. The widows of those three civilians sued the government to try to get the accident investigation report. The government refused to hand it over. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, says Scott Silliman, a professor at Duke University and an expert on military law.

 

Professor SCOTT SILLIMAN (Duke University): The Air Force secretary and the Air Force adjutant general submitted an affidavit to court saying, `If you release this report, it will create grave damage to the national security of the United States.' Supreme Court said, `OK, we're not going to release that information.'

 

NORTHAM: In the case, known as US vs. Reynolds, the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege, which allows the administration to push for the dismissal of court cases it feels could jeopardize national security, disrupt foreign relations or disclose intelligence gathering, methods or capabilities. Thing is, none of those appeared in the accident report, says Judy Palya Loether, a daughter of one of the civilians killed in the crash. Five years ago, Loether discovered a Web site that offered declassified accident reports involving Air Force planes.

 

Ms. JUDY PALYA LOETHER (Daughter of Killed Civilian): It just suddenly hit me there's an accident report out there that would tell me why that plane crashed and what that big secret was, you know, what it was they had been working on that day.

 

NORTHAM: When she received the documents, Loether was stunned to find that there was nothing in the report about secret equipment. Instead, Loether found a laundry list of crew errors that began when one of the plane's engines caught on fire.

 

Ms. LOETHER: The pilot was supposed to have feathered that engine, which means turning that engine off because it was on fire, and he feathered the wrong engine. Another engine seems to have suddenly lost power. And the accident report speculated that the engineer cut the fuel to engine number two instead of the engine that was on fire.

 

NORTHAM: By the time it crashed, three of the plane's four engines were not working. It appeared to Loether that the State Secrets Privilege was used to cover up poor maintenance and crew error rather than protect national security concerns. She and other surviving family members are trying to take the case back to court. In the years following the Reynolds decision, successive administrations use the privilege only sparingly, but a recent report by OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of government watchdog groups, said use of the privilege is on the rise. Rick Blum, director of the organization, authored the report.

 

Mr. RICK BLUM (Openthegovernment.org Director): Between 1953 and 1976, the government used this power four times. This is at the height of the Cold War. And in the past four years alone, we used that power 23 times.

 

NORTHAM: The state secrets privilege is currently being invoked in several high-profile cases challenging administration policies. A federal judge dismissed one lawsuit brought by an engineer who questioned the effectiveness of the country's nascent missile defense system. The government invoked the privilege in another case involving an FBI linguist who complained to her superiors about the quality of some translations of intelligence data before 9/11. She was later fired. Another case involved an African-American named Jeffrey Sterling who was a former CIA operations officer. Mark Zaid, Sterling's lawyer, says that his client was fired shortly after he sued the CIA for racial discrimination. Zaid says the CIA invoked the State Secrets Privilege saying that Sterling's entire case should be dismissed for two reasons...

 

Mr. MARK ZAID (Attorney): Because, in order for Sterling to prove his case of racial discrimination, would either require us to present classified information, or in order for the CIA to defend itself, they would have to invoke classified information. And that was unacceptable to the CIA.

 

NORTHAM: The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that there was no way for the case to go forward without revealing classified details. The case was dismissed. Wilson Brown, a Philadelphia lawyer, says it's not at all unusual for judges to give substantial deference to the government in cases where the state secrets privilege is involved. Brown says judges are first briefed by government officials.

 

Mr. WILSON BROWN (Attorney): The theory is that the government--the executive branch is in the best position to assess all the various factors that need to go into whether a particular item of information has national security implications or not.

 

NORTHAM: Brown says judges may be very deferential but not necessarily supine. He says sometimes they do question the legitimacy of the government's claim. Brown represents family members of the civilians who died in the B-29 crash. They unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to revisit the Reynolds case in light of the newly declassified accident report.

 

Mr. BROWN: There is conceivably a cautionary tale here. When you extend as much deference as the Supreme Court has extended to the executive branch in the world of State Secrets, you ought to be prepared when a case is presented that shows that that privilege may have been abused or that deference may have been abused. You ought to be prepared to act on that.

 

NORTHAM: Justice Department and CIA officials declined to talk about the state secrets privilege. But Shannen Coffin, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's civil division, which dealt with cases involving the state secrets privilege, says it's wrong to presume that the government invokes a privilege haphazardly.

 

Mr. SHANNEN COFFIN (Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General): There are numerous levels of review, from the career lawyers who are involved in a case up to the Cabinet official who eventually has to invoke the privilege. It is not taken lightly by the government. It is very seriously guarded and is only used in circumstances where there is a sincere belief that important national security information is threatened by disclosure in court.

 

NORTHAM: Coffin says in the post-9/11 world, the need to guard national secrets is paramount and so judges should defer to the government. Yet, 50 years after the case involving the crash of the B-29 and the claim of state secrets, there's now much discussion in the legal community about how to better apply the privilege. Jackie Northam, NPR News.

 

MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.

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I've been watching and listening to a lot of the hearings. He is indeed quite an impressive nominee. I hope to take the Sterling and Edmonds cases, both of which are discussed above, to the Supreme Court and if that happens Judge Roberts will be the Chief Justice by then.

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