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American Morning

America's New War: Look at Shadowy Legacy of Al-Qaeda

Aired September 21, 2001 - 10:33   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. Bush also went on to say -- well, that's not me. There I am -- that Al Qaeda is to terrorism what the Mafia is to crime, an interesting analogy. Al Qaeda is a very dispersed network of organizations, some 60 pinpoints all across the globe.

Joining to help us sort this outside is perhaps the journalist who knows as much about this as anyone, Peter Bergen, a former CNN producer, now a freelance journalist and is working very busily on a book on Osama bin Laden and his organization.

Peter, is that a good analogy? The Mafia?

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM EXPERT: As a larger point, I think it's a good analogy, I think in the sense that Al Qaeda is the source of multiple terrorist attacks against the United States.

But let me tell you where the analogy may fall down a tiny bit. In a Mafia crime family, it's kind of a reasonably well-ordered institution, in the sense that you have the capo, or the don of the family, orders let's say a hit, and then it's executed by the faithful foot soldiers. I think the bin Laden organization may act like that sometimes. But it also acts in a much more sort of vague and amorphous way, in the sense that bin Laden sets out general policies, which are then relayed down a chain of command and years later, implemented for instance in the U.S. embassy bombing attack in Africa. That attack was on the drawing board for five years. Some of the people involved in that attack had never actually met bin Laden himself. So there's some truth to analogy, but I think it kind of sometimes sort of falls down on specifics, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Here, we put the graphic together which illustrates some of the attacks linked to either Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden in general. It begin in 1992 in the part of Aden and Yemen. And in that case, a bomb below up in a hotel. The goal to injure or kill U.S. servicemen in that hotel. One tourist was killed. Moving across, 1993, first attack on World Trade Center. In that case, Osama bin Laden unindicted coconspirator. There were loose links to that group.

First of all, would you put in category of an Al Qaeda attack, or was that just simply people who might have been inspired by bin Laden's rhetoric?

BERGEN: I think two things, Miles, as you mentioned, bin Laden was an unindicted coconspirator in that attack. But that was a number of -- there are about 100-plus people who are unindicted coconspirators, but as a result of his name popping up in that investigation, FBI and CIA started paying more attention to bin Laden. But if we go back and look at that attack, you see a number of players, in fact, actual members of Al Qaeda itself were U.S. citizens, were on the periphery of that attack. In my view, the World Trade Center attack in 1993 was a sort of an Al Qaeda-affiliated bombing attack. I think would be very hard to prove that bin Laden had a direct role in it.

But nonetheless, people operating on the peripheries and -- Shakh Rakhmanin (ph), the radical Egyptian cleric who is now in prison in America for his role in New York terror plots, is the spiritual guide of a lot of members of Al Qaeda. So you're going to see a lot of connections. Of course law enforcement won't be going back to look at that, in terms of particularly the use of the mastermind of attack.

O'BRIEN: Let me move it along, because I want to try to get to some of these other links, and give you a sense of the crescendo of violence that has come along here.

Mogadishu, Somalia. Now this is an interesting one. One wouldn't necessarily link this to terrorism per se. U.S. troops in there to help in famine relief. The Blackhawk being shot down by rocket-propelled grenades. The link here to Osama bin Laden and his organization is that they were helping out the warlords there, learning how to do just that. Is that the allegation?

BERGEN: This is one of the very few areas where the U.S. government and Bin Laden are sort of in agreement. I mean, both the U.S. government and bin Laden say his followers had some role in the attack. The fog of battle being such that it is. It probably never going to be very clear what exact role bin Laden's followers had in the actual killing of those 18 American servicemen.

But nonetheless, his organization certainly sent people to Somalia to train Somalians who may have been involved in killing those American soldiers, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's go to Saudi Arabia now. Saudi Arabia, of course, where Osama bin Laden is his home, there was an attack there in 1995, a car bomb detonating. Five service personnel, U.S. servicemen were killed in that attack. And then we move down to the African continent, in 1998, this synchronized attack on two U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. In those cases, 224 people killed. It seems as if, looking at these attacks, that things get more complicated, more intricate and more deadly as time goes on.

BERGEN: Miles, I think you're right. It's sort of an exponential graph, starting with that first example in 1992 in Yemen with an unsuccessful attack and culminating the with the dual embassy bombings attack in Africa, and then two years later, with the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and so it seems that these attacks have gotten more sophisticated, more complex, and more deadly with every passing year. O'BRIEN: Let's move along and talk a little bit briefly about the Cole, if we could. That takes right back to Yemen. Yemen is known to harbor terrorism in general. This is a country that, in Mr. Bush's mind, might be against us, if you will, the way he put last night. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorist.

I am curious as we look at this particular attack. This attack happened in October. There was some hope on the part of some of the bin Laden followers to try and stage a Y2K spectacle, where a U.S. warship would have been sunk. That was thwarted. How many attacks do you know of that have been thwarted by authorities or perhaps the ineptitude of people who were following Al Qaeda?

BERGEN: Well, the millennium plot, as you referred to, was supposed to be a terrorist spectacular, as you will, that would span the globe from Los Angeles Airport to Jordan to that failed attack on U.S. warship in Yemen. That was the most spectacular.

But I mean, there have been several cells that have been taken down. Recently, in fact, in June, in New Delhi, some people were arrested who were planning to blowup the very busy visa section of U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India. So there have been a lot of plots that have been foiled because of the incompetence of the plotters or because of good police work. Obviously, many also have not failed, unfortunately.

O'BRIEN: Peter Bergen, freelance journalist, who is taking time away from writing to spend with us and help us understand a little bit more about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. We really appreciate your time and your insights.

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