Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Interview of Shirley Dreifus, Spiros Kopelakis

Aired March 05, 2002 - 09:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And we are going to move on to a different kind of controversy. It is an unforgettable image when firefighters raised that American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center of September 11th, it evoked images of Iwo Jima. The flag, though, is now causing a flap itself. A New York City couple claims it belongs to them. They don't want the flag back, they just want a place in history. And now, they are asking the firefighters to actually sign papers stating that the flag was taken from their yacht, the Star of America, but a lawyer for the heroes says the burden of proof lies with the owner, Shirley Dreifus and her husband, Spiros Kopelakis. And they both join us now from Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. Welcome, good to see you two.

SHIRLEY DREIFUS, OWNER, STAR OF AMERICA: Good morning.

ZAHN: All right, Shirley. Let's talk a little bit about why you are so convinced that that flag that we saw fly over the World Trade Center ruins is, in fact, yours?

DREIFUS: Well, we knew the next morning that it was our flag. Actually, we knew that evening. Our flag -- our boat was docked in -- right outside the World Financial Center, and when our crew, who had been evacuated from the boat, went back that afternoon, the flag and the flagpole were missing from the boat. It was the only boat with the flag missing. And actually, if you look at the photograph of the firefighters raising the flag, you will see our original flagpole in the picture.

ZAHN: All right, we are actually going to put up a picture now, Shirley, of a photo that one of your crew members took before the attack, which shows, at that point the flag still attached to the flag poll. It is going to slowly be with us.

All right, this was that picture. And then we're going to very slowly morph this into a more recent picture. Here's a photograph of the -- you know, I can barely make this out, but I don't have good eye sight without my little glasses. It's a point in my life (ph). Here is a photograph of the yacht after the attack, with no flag. Very difficult to make this out, but the bottom line is, the attorneys for these firefighters are now saying the burden of proof is on you. Do you really think that these pictures are going to prove anything?

DREIFUS: I think the pictures show that the flag came from our boat. Our real purpose in doing this, though, is not because we want to say the flag is ours. We just wanted to make sure that the flag was used appropriately. We want to make sure the flag ends up in a memorial or in a museum with people doing crazy things like selling keys from the World Trade Center on E-Bay or selling ashes from the building, we didn't want anything terrible to happen to the flag. It was very important to us. We actually lived downtown. We witnessed the plane go into our office on the 89th floor. We actually met in the World Trade Center in 1975. We've spent most of our life around the World Trade Center, and the flag and what it meant is so important to us. We wanted to make sure that it had its place in history.

ZAHN: All right. Spiros, but a lot of people wonder if you feel -- both of you feel as strongly as you do about this, why you waited almost six months to make this claim? Why didn't you do it the first couple of months?

SPIROS KOPELAKIS, OWNER, STAR OF AMERICA: We knew from the first day, as my wife explained. The question is that we had so many other, actually, problems, financial, and so forth, to stay on our feet, and even though we are very proud of our flag, it wasn't the first actual important matter for us at this time. But, again, upon one day we are shown in "U.S. Today" (ph) that the firefighters, they admit that they took the flag from a yacht, and they don't know which yacht and which owners. We thought that -- we cannot wait any longer, but to report that we are the owners, and that we have evidence that even people from the marina, they showed the firefighters taking the flag on September 11th.

ZAHN: All right, Shirley, let's come back, though, to the whole question of what is motivating you at this point. You say you want to make sure that it is shown appropriately in museums. You don't really want the flag back, but then you no doubt have read some accounts that suggest that you're motives are less generous, that you and your husband are after some tax breaks here. Is that true?

DREIFUS: Yeah. Unfortunately, you can't control what the media writes and what they say. You know, we lost everything that day. Fortunately, we didn't lose our lives like so many other people, but we lost friends in the building, we lost clients. We only escaped by accident. We overslept that morning. We were supposed to be there at 8:00. Fortunately, our employees evacuated just with seconds to spare, Building Two crumbled around them as they left. You know, it means a lot to us. I mean, what a reporter says about a tax deduction. I can't control what someone else says.

ZAHN: But Shirley -- Shirley, you can tell us then today that that is absolutely not true? This is not about going after a tax break?

DREIFUS: This is certainly not about going after a tax break, after what we have lost, that is kind of a foolish statement to make anyway. You know, we've lost everything. We lost all of our business. We lost our income. We've had to mortgage everything we own to try and restart to make sure that our employees still get paid. So you know, the statement was just so ridiculous and unnecessary.

ZAHN: Yeah, we should make it clear that wasn't our statement. We're just...

DREIFUS: No, we know. It was...

ZAHN: You, no doubt, know we're repeating what some of your critics have alleged. But we wish you a great deal of luck as you get your feet back up on the ground there, and we'll continue to follow this, and -- any idea when this might all be sorted out -- Shirley?

DREIFUS: We don't really know. We actually believe the firefighters and we have the same purpose in life, which is to make sure the flag is kept as a memorial to that horrible day. It's the only good memory we have of that day, and I'm sure the firefighters feel the same way. We just the only reason we intervened at all is to make sure that it gets preserved.

ZAHN: Well, good luck to both of you, Shirley Dreifus and Spiros Kopelakis. Thank you for joining us.

KOPELAKIS: Thank you.

DREIFUS: Thank you.

KOPELAKIS: Thank you very much.

DREIFUS: Thank you.

ZAHN: It's really interesting just to see what kind of controversy this is inspiring.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com