Aid Group Says Independent Probe Needed
MALVEAUX: Doctors Without Borders today demanding an independent investigation into this weekend's airstrike. The attack hit a hospital in Afghanistan run by the group killing at least 22, including 12 aid workers. President Obama offering his condolences over this incident and the White House released a statement from the president also promising to get answers about possible U.S. involvement. Quote, "The Department of Defense has launched a full investigation and we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgment as to the circumstances of this tragedy. I have asked the Department of Defense to keep me apprised of the investigation and expect a full accounting of the facts." Doctors Without Borders says it wants an independent investigation. I want to bring in Retired Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer. Thank you very much very much for joining us. The Pentagon says they will have a full investigation and Doctors Without Borders say we want something independent. What are the kinds of things that you look for, where do you even start when you have those questions about how on earth did something like this happened? LT. COL. TONY SHAFFER</s>FORMER U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Tragically this is not the first time this has happened. When I was there in 2003, we bombed a bunch of women and children because of bad intelligence. And in this case there may be some of that. The Afghan forces were I believe the intelligence on this specific target and more than once where they have been completely careless on giving us information. In this case it was sustained, it was a long term thing and clearly the other thing that they will to is command and control. When the Doctors Without Borders contacted us, the United States, saying, stop, we didn't stop so there is two pieces we have to go at here. Was the intelligence reliable and why didn't we stop when we had the correct information saying this is a bad target? Those two things have to be sorted through. I'm not sure what Doctors Without Borders wants regarding independent. I mean, we have been very self-critical of this. The Pentagon -- General Joe Dunford (ph) just took over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You have General Campbell in charge over there, both very honorable men, who actually know and will do the right thing in this investigation. So I do believe it will be investigated and I do believe both generals want to ensure it gets fixed.</s>MALVEAUX: I want to ask you about that second piece. The fact is they asked U.S. airstrikes to stop and that didn't happen in a timely way, what could be the reason why that wouldn't happen? Would that be a communications problem? Would that be not actually believing the source that was coming from? What do you think was that disconnect?</s>SHAFFER: Excellent question. I believe it had to do more with the time it takes for information to flow from a remote location to the right authorities within the chain of command and then giving the command to stop. Everything cannot be spontaneous. So I do believe they called in the right folks, but it just takes time. The other factor here obviously is once you start shooting, it's difficult to get the forces to kind of pull back. And the third factor, overall the operation against Taliban in Kunduz was successful. They have been able to expel the forces out. So the one bit of good news here, I don't mean to put a happy face on it. But the fact is the afghan forces did not collapse like a cheap card table and they were able to successfully push out the foe. So it tells me, first, we are making progress in Afghanistan. To depart would be a complete mistake. We do need to figure out what happened and how to prevent it going forward.</s>MALVEAUX: You have these battles between the Taliban, NATO forces, Afghan forces in this area for days and the Taliban uses these particular areas whether a hospital or school or mosque as a shield. How do you prevent that from happening because that will continue to be a strategy?</s>SHAFFER: Absolutely. Again, this happened -- I note this in my book in 2003, the Taliban were encouraging the Afghan militia to give us the wrong information, thereby describing one of their tribal adversaries. So that's why solid intelligence is so very important to being effective in this environment. We've cut back to about 10,000 troops. We're minimizing our offensive capability. But you see all these tribal rivalries which go back 1,000 years popping up again. So we have to be very careful when we accept information like this. But once the target is identified as being friendly, you have to stop rapidly and that's what we have to get to the bottom of here.</s>MALVEAUX: Do you think this underscores the need to have human intelligence on the ground?</s>SHAFFER: My goodness, yes. Human intelligence is critical in this environment. We cannot rely on drones or phone intercepts. Knowing what is over the wall can only be done if you have penetrated the terrorist network. In this case I do believe intelligence should have been there to tell us where these guys were being -- were the Taliban were actually hanging out and this is where the disconnect may have come through that breakdown. But the more human intelligence you have, the more you have inside the network, the better the chances are you can defeat that network, absolutely.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer, thank you very much. We appreciate the perspective. The Vatican fires a senior priest after revealing he's gay and he has a partner. His story is up next.