Remember that transcript the Pentagon posted of the interview Sam Tanenhaus did with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for Vanity Fair magazine? Just how complete and accurate 
is it? As I discussed in my article this morning in The Hill, what I found most surprising was a passage in which Tanenhaus discusses the portion of the interview in which he and Wolfowitz discussed the possibility that Saddam may have played a role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. According to Tanenhaus’ article, Wolfowitz is “confident” Saddam played some role in the 1993 incident and has “entertained” the theory that he played a role in the Oklahoma City bombing as well. In the interview, according to Tanenhaus, Wolfowitz declined comment on the 1995 bombing.
These are theories that are, to put it mildly, not widely credited. And it raises some serious questions about just what sorts of theories gained credence at the DOD.
I wanted to see the actual interchange so I called up the transcript of the interview on the Pentagon website. And that passage is nowhere to be found.
So I called the Pentagon to see if the transcript was a complete transcript or only a partial one. A Wolfowitz spokesman, 
Jeff Davis, told me that, though he wasn’t present during the interview, to the best of his knowledge it was a complete transcript — save, possibly, for any pleasantries at the beginning of the conversation, or any parts that may have been off the record.
So what happened to the parts of the interview where the 1993 and 1995 bombings were discussed? Davis speculated that those quotes from Wolfowitz might not have been from the interview at all, but rather from published accounts of other previous statements Wolfowitz may have made, or other transcripts from the Pentagon website that Tanenhaus may have gotten his hands on.
So then I called Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair’s Beth Kseniak told me categorically that Tanenhaus’ and Wolfowitz’s discussion of the 1993 and 1995 bombings definitely took place during their interview.
If that’s true, why isn’t it anywhere in the Pentagon’s transcript?
