Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Obama Admin Trying To Make Bergdahl Blunder Disappear

MACCALLUM: “Obviously it would be embarrassing for the White House if they secured his release and in exchange — it’s not embarrassing if they secured his release. He is over there. They want to get him back. But if all of that was separate, right. So he’s right there, you want him back. That’s what we do. Then you open an investigation. Very up front — did he or not desert like his — people he served with claim he did. But then it got complicated by fact that in order to secure that release five Taliban members were released.”
SHAFFER: “Exactly.”
MACCALLUM: “A lot of people were very upset about that and you claim that there were other options on the table, that the White House didn’t need to resort to the release of these five Taliban members, one whom has already tried to reach out to his old cronies.”
SHAFFER: “That’s right.”
MACCALLUM: “What were some of the other options the White House could have done?” 
SHAFFER: “I can’t go into all the options, some are still classified. But besides this option there were three others. The each had their own degree of complexity. Each had their own degree of potential success or failure. When you put it on the big picture I believe the other options of with like or better success or likelihood than this one without giving up five adversaries, five enemies, two of which were actually material supporters of the al Qaeda folks in the 9/11 attacks. So this is where — and clearly Martha, we have troops in combat in Afghanistan. These guys will be going back to a rock star welcome and return to combat. So again, the president had much better options with less downside available to him.”
MACCALLUM: “But the president just said yesterday in fact, in answer to a question, that if he could do something differently, he would have closed GITMO on day one --"
SHAFFER: “Exactly.”
MACCALLUM: “And he said because we couldn’t do that we had to do it basically through attrition over the years. So this provided, to get Bowe Bergdahl home, provided an opportunity to get rid of five of them to get them out of the place and get closer to his goal, correct?"
SHAFFER: “I believe that is the political motivation behind this move. I mean, again, I've never heard of any modern war, Martha, where we returned essentially the equivalent of army four-star generals of the adversary to the adversary when we’re still in contact with the enemy. This is unheard of, and frankly, as you said, I believe it is all about the political narrative. President wanted to clear five of the worst detainees out of GITMO so he could kind of take everybody else as quickly as possible. Frankly that is not a reason to do this.”