Editor’s NOTE: Published below is a Letter to the Editor about the recent controversy regarding Chowan County Commissioner Tony Shaffer’s objections to reappointing Sherrone Battle to the Shepard Pruden Library that comes from Derence Fivehouse of Chowan County.

BY DERENCE FIVEHOUSE

My late wife and I fell in love with this community 26 years ago. I moved here permanently after  she died and built a home and a new life. I participate in this community and for the last 10 years  volunteered full-time – to give back in gratitude. I’m not here to impose anything—I’m here  because I care. This is my home. 

This isn’t about left or right. It’s about whether our leaders tell the truth and treat volunteers with  respect. When the facts don’t line up with what someone in office is claiming, someone has to  speak up. That’s not political—it’s civic responsibility. 

County Commissioner Tony Shaffer, representing the District where I have my home, argued for  and obtained the removal of a member of the Shepard-Pruden Library Board of Trustees. Wow!!  Pretty aggressive. I thought, what could a volunteer on a relatively innocuous committee have  possibly done that was so wrong? I read the back and forth.  

Commissioner Shaffer claimed the board member (an eight-year library volunteer and local  school board member) “doesn’t support library programming for veterans,” which was subsequently denied as “completely false.” Several citizens who read the minutes of the board’s  meetings substantiated the denial. The only thing the board member hadn’t supported was  Commissioner Shaffer’s proposal to use library resources for an event centered on the town’s  Confederate monument. That’s not exactly “anti-veteran.” And, it was the same position the rest  of the board supported – who both still hold their positions. 

I don’t know Commissioner Shaffer personally, but I know of him. Maybe you should too. 

I first became aware of Tony Shaffer in 2005. Four years after the 9/11 attacks and the  identification of the hijackers by the U.S. intelligence community, Mr. Shaffer caused a national  stir by claiming he had been part of a secret military-intelligence effort in 2000 (Operation Able  Danger) that identified the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11. He asserted that the agencies he worked  for – the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where he was then a mid-level analyst, and the  Army Reserve, where he was then a mid-grade, part-time officer – failed to act on this  information. (For context: I was in D.C. on 9/11 and I watched from an office in Rosslyn as AA  Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.) 

As might be expected, Mr. Shaffer’s dramatic allegations prompted multiple investigations. Every one of them, from the 9/11 Commission, to the Senate Intelligence Committee, to DIA and  the DoD Inspector General – concluded that his story lacked credible evidence. The Senate  Intelligence Committee concluded that Able Danger did not identify Mohamed Atta or any other  9/11 hijacker at any time prior to September 11, 2001. The Pentagon’s own Inspector General  reached the same conclusion that the project that Mr. Shaffer was involved in uncovered no  advance knowledge of the 9/11 plot. Investigators found no documentation – no charts, no lists – created before 9/11 that contained any of the hijackers’ names or photographs.

What was Able Danger? It was a small, proof-of-concept task force initiated by the Army in  1999–2000 to see if publicly available data from the internet could yield actionable leads on al Qaeda terrorists. It ran through late 2000 and was shut down in early 2001. The project wasn’t  pursued further, partly due to legal concerns regarding the risk of scooping up information about  U.S. persons in the course of pulling data from the internet. The lawyers were nervous that  mining internet data might snag Americans’ information, violating DoD prohibitions on domestic spying. 

Years after 9/11, Mr. Shaffer became convinced that Able Danger had in fact identified some of  the hijackers – including ringleader Mohamed Atta – before the attacks. In ~2004, without  authorization, he took this claim to Congress. He attempted to testify before Congress, but he  was directed not to appear in uniform or speak in an official capacity. However, in more limited  capacities, he provided statements to Congress that his superiors at DIA and Army knew the  identities of the 9/11 hijackers beforehand and failed to act – thus missing a chance to prevent the  worst terrorist attack in American history. 

When. Shaffer’s allegations were investigated, the results were uniformly negative for the  credibility of his information. The DIA’s internal review and the DoD Inspector General found  no evidence to back up Commissioner Shaffer’s story of pre-9/11 identification. The most  generous explanation is that Mr. Shaffer misremembered a visual aid – a big chart of al-Qaeda  suspects involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that was provided to the Able Danger  team as a visual aid. Shaffer convinced himself it showed at least some of the 9/11 hijackers  when it did not. Shaffer claimed to have been in possession of that very poster and identified it  as proof – when the investigators asked him for it, it had “disappeared.”

Not a single other Able  Danger team member substantiated Shaffer’s account. One Navy officer who initially seemed to  support Shaffer’s story recanted, admitting he was convinced Atta was not on the chart and  suggesting that Shaffer was mistaken. Several of Able Danger’s leaders attested that Shaffer’s  role in the project was actually more minor than he made it out to be in his statements.  

In the 25+ years since 9/11, no evidence has emerged to validate Shaffer’s claims – nothing. 

Shaffer’s employer, the DIA, was sufficiently alarmed by the whole affair that it conducted its  own investigation and ultimately took administrative action to revoke his security clearance. In  2004, while the Able Danger controversy was unfolding, DIA first suspended Shaffer’s security  clearance, which meant he was barred from access to classified information. In 2005, the agency  permanently revoked his clearance, and, since a clearance was a condition of his employment,  the agency fired him. Shaffer’s various appeals and grievances delayed the final paperwork until  2006, which finally ended his employment at DIA. According to documents later filed in court,  DIA cited serious concerns with Shaffer’s trustworthiness and judgment, as well as a litany of  alleged misconduct – some potentially criminal. Specifically, an internal DIA memo accused him  of filing a false travel voucher, misusing a government cell phone for personal calls, mishandling  classified documents, bypassing his chain of command to brief higher-ups without permission, misusing his DoD credentials, and financial irresponsibility.

In short, DIA found him unreliable.  No criminal charges were brought against Shaffer for these incidents. That might sound odd, but  in the grand scheme of things these were relatively minor infractions. Having worked as a  military prosecutor, I can tell you it’s often not worth the time and effort to criminally prosecute  a member for small-potato infractions when there are alternatives. It’s often better to pull their  clearance, fire them and quickly get them out of the organization. It seems this was exactly what  happened here. 

Shaffer claimed he was a “whistleblower” who faced retaliation for speaking up. He cast himself  as the victim of a DoD cover-up. The DoD Inspector General took a hard look at his claims – and  found them without merit. The IG’s 2006 report flatly concluded that DIA officials did not  retaliate or “reprise” against Mr. Shaffer for his Able Danger disclosures.

The unclassified IG  report included the laundry list of the findings of misconduct that justified revoking his security  clearance and firing him. That section of the report was entirely blacked out for Mr. Shaffer’s  privacy. Only Shaffer can authorize its full release – which he has never done. Nonetheless, the  specific allegations against him became public later, when Shaffer himself described them in  pleadings filed when he sued his first lawyers – even after failing to pay their fees of $21,744.37. 

In a sworn declaration filed in a later lawsuit alleging malpractice against the lawyers who  represented him against DIA, Shaffer confirmed that DIA’s stated reasons for firing him were those mentioned above. He used the terms “questionable judgment, trustworthiness and personal  conduct,” “false travel claim,” “misuse of a government-owned cellular phone,” “failure to  properly safeguard classified information,” “circumvent[ing] [the] supervisory chain of  command to provide briefings,” “misuse of U.S. government credentials,” and “financial  irresponsibility.” He apparently admitted flashing his military ID while drunk years earlier, and  blamed a $341 mileage overcharge on bad advice from staff. The malpractice case went  nowhere; it was dismissed in 2021 and Shaffer did not appeal.  

To this day, Shaffer has never been reinstated by any civilian federal government agency, nor has he regained a security clearance – to the best I can discern. 

After his ouster from DIA, Shaffer reinvented himself as an author and “media personality.” He  co-authored a book with Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Salmon titled Operation Dark  Heart, loosely based on his experiences during a short deployment to Afghanistan in as a junior  intelligence officer. When seeking authorization to publish the book, Shaffer sidestepped the  usual review by DIA, which would have resulted in the removal of its classified information. 

Instead he submitted the manuscript to his Army Reserve unit. Apparently not fully aware of  what was still classified, his Army Reserve unit signed off on it. By the time DIA and the CIA  got wind of the book, it was already at the printing press. Upon reading Operation Dark Heart, DIA and CIA determined it contained significant amounts of classified information that should  never have been made public. In a nearly unprecedented move, DoD bought up and destroyed  the entire first print run – some 9,500 copies – in September 2010, in order to prevent still  classified information from circulating. Unfortunately, about 200 advance review copies, which  included the classified information, had already been sent out to media and reviewers, and some  of those sold on eBay once it became known that those copies contained classified information. 

A redacted version of the memoir was officially published soon after, with hundreds of blacked out passages. The publicity over DoD’s “book shredding” made Shaffer’s book notorious – and  likely contributed to its appearance on the New York Times bestseller list in late 2010. Operation  Dark Heart was likely a book that few would have read, had the DoD’s intervention not turned it  into a hot item. Reviews politely noted that Shaffer’s autobiography seemed self-serving and not  fully credible. It apparently wasn’t exactly great literature or groundbreaking revelation. I  haven’t read it.  

Freed from government employment, Shaffer continued to push a narrative of government  malfeasance and personal victimhood, and he has found receptive audiences in certain political  circles. He remains active in public discourse on intelligence and security issues – albeit almost  exclusively in conservative media outlets. He parlayed his notoriety into a position at the London  Center for Policy Research, a small D.C. conservative “think-tank” (founded by Herbert  London), where Shaffer eventually became President. He is introduced in media segments as Lt.  Col. Tony Commissioner Shaffer (Ret.), a “CIA-trained intelligence officer” and bestselling  author – true enough, as far as it goes. He apparently received some basic training at “the Farm”  as a junior Army intelligence officer. Shaffer presents himself as a highly connected ex-spy with  deep insider knowledge.

In reality, much of what he offers is speculation or second-hand, but he  states it with great authority. (He shouldn’t have access to currently classified information  without a clearance.) He has been a regular on media outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, and  is notably absent from mainstream networks.

Shaffer consistently promotes narratives critical of  what he calls the ‘Deep State. He has promoted a host of dubious claims – from insinuating the  FBI plotted against Trump, to hyping the Benghazi conspiracy theory, to suggesting the CIA and  NSA are out of control. In appearances on Russia Today (Russian propaganda TV) and  elsewhere, Mr. Shaffer has emphasized critiques of NATO and U.S. foreign policy, often aligning  with Russian messaging.  

In recent years, Shaffer launched a podcast called “The Hard Truth with Tony Shaffer.” His  commentary there is as controversial as ever – especially on the topics of 9/11 and the 2020  election. He still brings up his old Able Danger allegations. In one episode before the 2024  election, he hosted a guest claiming that shadowy U.S. intelligence operatives had embedded  secret algorithms into voting machines to alter results of the 2024 elections. 

I share this because I thought it relevant to the question of who to believe in the latest  controversy initiated by Commissioner Shaffer. Regardless of political affiliation, public trust  matters. When a commissioner pushes out a respected volunteer based on a claim that the public  record contradicts, we have to ask: What else don’t we know? 

I know this has been long, I hope this has provided some information you might find helpful.

If Commissioner Shaffer believes anything I’ve written is inaccurate, I invite him to provide a  source that contradicts the records I’ve cited. I’ll be happy to revise any statement that’s shown to be wrong. 

Derence V. Fivehouse 

Chowan County, NC