academy of engineering, a panel investigating the cause of the disaster. bp blamed its contractor for the well s failure. the defense department upset with one of its own. it says it purchased and destroyed thousands of copies of a memoir written by an army reserve officer about an undercover operation in afghanistan. the military contends that the book operation dark heart could damage national security t. author, lieutenant colonel and bronze star recipient calls it retaliation. barbara, what upset the department so much about this book? kyra, they wanted this book, the first run copies destroyed because they said there was classified information in it. when s the last time we heard about the u.s. government ordering the destruction of a book in this country. but here it is. operation dark heart. this is by lieutenant colonel anthony schaeffer. if you open the second run
of an afghan s veteran s book may be a threat to national security. the government used taxpayer money to buy thousands of copies of that book and burn it. 9500 copies. good morning, everybody, i m bill hemmer, welcome to america s newsroom on monday. hope you had a great weekend. martha: good morning, everybody at home i m martha maccallum. sources are telling fox this morning that the defense department spent 45 grand on these books to get them out of circulation and then they burned them. so what is it that is in that book that they do not want you to know? bill: that is the question. that memoir record of one man s undercover mission in afghanistan. steve centanni is live in washington on that. exactly why did they burn the book, steve? reporter: well they say operation dark heart poses a threat to national security. they didn t explain exactly why, but part of the book does deal within tell generals information that who he hammed atta was
colonel shavffer is saying he submitted the book to his immediate bosses, but when higher-ups here at the pentagon saw it all, they said, nope, there s still classified information in there and some of it has to come out. if you want to buy operation dark heart, you have to buy the second printing of it. the one with the blacked out passages. that s interesting. i just checked on the ipad to see if they had it, the original copy and they actually note this has been r changed by the defen department. how long before the original shows up there? people are scouring the internet, looking to see if they can buy one of those initial copies that may have escaped the military s destruction. i think you can be it s a safe bet to assume people are going to be looking to see how fast they can grab one of those copies. in cyber space in the 21st century, it s awfully hard to destroy information forever. john, kiran. one thing about the internet,
reporter: jenna the pentagon isn t saying exactly how but they demanded the book operation dark heart be heavily redacted. the memoir about working undercover in afghanistan was written by tony shaffer. a lieutenant kernel in the army reserves. they gave the go ahead to public the book, then the intelligence agency weighed in demanding more changes. one of the issues aeu carding to shaffer was the intelligence operation called danger. where mohammed atta was identified as a danger to the u.s. before the attacks on 9/11. necessity took an entire paragraph out talking about documents relating to my having a full set of the able danger documents and they were removed from my office at dia, and they pulled that out at one point in time. and i said look i m not going to stand for this because in my open, publicly available publicly cleared testimony i talk about this fact. reporter: the pentagon spent
concerns spending tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money. how did this book threaten our national security? reporter: the pentagon didn t say why it, such a threat, but they demanded the book operation dark heart be heavily redacted and the first public kissing destroyed. it was written by a lieutenant colonel in the army reserves. they gave the go-ahead to publish the book, then the intelligence agency demand changes. mohammad atta was identified as a danger to the u.s. before the attacks. schaeffer was fired for talking about that fact at the request of the congress and he believes sensorrincensoring of his book f