http://web.archive.org/web/20010917011524/www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/t09142001_t914irby.html

United States Department of Defense
NEWS TRANSCRIPT

 Presenter: John F. Irby, Director, Federal Facilities Division. Friday, September 14, 2001 – 1:00 p.m.

DoD News Briefing – Pentagon Update

<!– START HEADER DoD News Briefing John F. Irby, Director, Federal Facilities Division Friday, September 14, 2001 – 1:00 p.m. END HEADER (14 lines) –>

(Also participating: Victoria Clarke, assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs; Army Maj. Gen. Jim Jackson, commanding general, Military District of Washington; James Schwartz, assistant chief, Arlington County Fire Department; and Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs. Slides used in this briefing are available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/g010914-D-6570.html )
 

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Q: Can I ask the chief a question please? I don’t mean to be churlish, but in New York they are getting accurate body counts. Can you tell us the reason why we’re not getting them? Because what’s ending up happening is that at various times we’re able to go out and talk to different people and we’re getting different estimates, and I think that’s concerning to folks. So we would like an official number.

Schwartz: And I can certainly appreciate the desire to know.

What I have to tell you, though, is that as we operate the incident command system with this incident, we do it jointly with other agencies, including the FBI. And their desire at this point is not to release that information, and I’m going to maintain that relationship and that confidence with them.