CNN’s Counterterrorism Analyst Shuts Down “Conspiracy Theorists” Over-Interpreting The Orlando Transcripts
Philip Mudd: “There Is No Secret Story Here”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the June 30 edition of CNN's New Day:
ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-HOST): What is the point of releasing these transcripts? What does law enforcement hope to accomplish?
EVAN PEREZ: Well, first, it's the law down in Florida. There is something called the Sunshine Law there that requires the government down there to release transcripts, at least transcripts of these 911 conversations. News media has requested them. And so this is also part of what the FBI and the Justice Department think will help bring some transparency, as you know, and as Polo mentioned in his piece, there has been some criticism about the FBI's previous contacts with this killer and as well as the police response in the initial hours there in Orlando.
JIM SCIUTTO (CO-HOST): So, Phil, the thing about this shooting, right, is that it seemed to have multiple motivations. Right? I mean, yes, he made this claim to ISIS but we don't want to grandize that with him. He was a wife-beater, he had these anger issues, he was angry he got rejected from the police academy, might have had some gay hate crime motivation. Did you expect to get some information, some data as to why from these transcripts?
PHILIP MUDD: I think quite the opposite. I think we are going to walk away either frustrated over over-interpreting these. Look, we’ve been at this for eight, nine days. Hundreds of thousands of investigators gathering everything from what happened at school to when he was a child, to what his relationship was with his wife, whether he had gay dating apps. And now we are trying to anticipate that a few minutes of tape in this conflict between, was he a terrorist, did he have mental issues? Was he a suppressed homosexual? What was going on in his family? We think these are going to offer a resolution. I think not. I think they're going to take us in the other direction opening more questions.
[…]
PEREZ: The FBI, I think, is just simply trying to limit the amount of value this has to ISIS. But in my view, it's already done.
CAMEROTA: Phil, in fact the attorney general was on all the Sunday shows yesterday, she said they are redacting parts of this transcript to keep from re-victimizing the victims.
MUDD: Yea
CAMEROTA: I don’t know if the victims want to hear anything from this
MUDD: Yea but you have the counter piece where a week into it and people are saying, the biggest mass murder in American history and we don't have a clue about what happened. Conspiracy theorists will say that, having been a federal official, the feds are trying to protect something that will give us real clues. So I think you're caught between a rock and a hard place. You don’t want to the families -- and I assume they're excising material that doesn’t relate to the investigation but that is brutal in how it portrays the fight and also telling Americans if we know something we'll try to tell you. There is no secret story here.
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Previously:
Stacey Dash Blames Obama And Hillary Clinton For “Politicizing” Orlando Shooting