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CNN Talkback Live

America Speaks Out: Did U.S. Intelligence Fail the American People?

Aired October 03, 2001 - 15:02   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.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Coming up on TALKBACK LIVE...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: It was a debacle. It was massive failure.

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BATTISTA: Did U.S. intelligence fail the American people?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES TRAFICANT (D), OHIO: After all these years, you mean to tell me our intelligence network cannot locate and infiltrate Osama bin Laden's organization?

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BATTISTA: Also, a man on a mission.

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DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: As we all know, there are a lot of things others can do, but there are some things that the secretary of defense has to do.

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BATTISTA: Just what is it Secretary Rumsfeld has to do in person right now in the Mideast?

TALKBACK LIVE is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Did a lapse in U.S. intelligence leave the U.S. vulnerable to attack?

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SEN. ROBERT TORRICELLI (R), NEW JERSEY: I think we know that there undoubtedly was a failure to track these people into the country, observe them while they were here, and at the same time obviously there were foreign intelligence problems as well.

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BATTISTA: Also is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking permission or laying out the plan as he meets with Middle East leaders?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ARMITAGE, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE: I think they, like many others, want to know exactly what we're up to, and I think Secretary Rumsfeld will explain that very well.

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BATTISTA: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, and Uzbekistan: What will the U.S. defense secretary ask of them? What might they want in return?

Good afternoon to all you, and welcome to "TALKBACK LIVE: America Speaks Out." In a few moments, we will look at how and why the September 11th terrorists slipped by U.S. intelligence, and whether the CIA, FBI and other agencies are up to snuff.

On the plane to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this morning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hinted that the U.S. might not be entirely in the dark about where Osama bin Laden is hiding out.

Before we get to that, though, let's find out more about Secretary Rumsfeld's overseas mission. Along with Saudi Arabia, he is planning visits to Oman, Egypt and Uzbekistan.

Joining us in Tashkent, Uzbekistan now by videophone is CNN correspondent Alessio Vinci.

Alessio, if you could tell us the significance of the secretary's trip to Uzbekistan.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bobbie, Uzbekistan is a very important country in this region. It has the largest standing military, some estimates say about 80,000 troops here. It has also an extremely well-equipped former Soviet air bases. Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union. And back in 1970 -- between 1979 and 1989, when the Soviet Union tried to invade Afghanistan, they were using Uzbekistan as their major launching pad, staging ground.

And therefore, those bases are still here, and indeed the secretary of defense is trying to come here to try to forge a new military alliance with Uzbekistan and eventually be able to substation in this country if the U.S. military would require so some -- some troops.

The president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, has already agreed to allow airspace to be used by the U.S. military aircraft. So far we have no information, however, whether Karimov has agreed to allow ground troops to be stationed here in Uzbekistan. Of course, Uzbekistan is also very important, because it has a short border with Afghanistan. However, as I said, those military bases -- two in the south, on the border with Afghanistan, and one here in Tashkent -- could be extremely helpful if the U.S. were to decide to put some ground troops here in Uzbekistan -- Bobbie.

BATTISTA: On the -- on the other hand, Alessio, what are the concerns in Uzbekistan about possible retaliation from Afghanistan if they aid the West?

VINCI: There are great concerns here, Bobbie, because, first of all, there is a terrorist group here called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the IMU. You may recall that a couple of days after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush, addressing the Congress, mentioned the IMU as one of the terrorist groups connected to the al Qaeda (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of Osama bin Laden.

Now, this IMU terrorist group has openly said that they want to unseat, they want to topple the government, the secular government of Islam Karimov, and install here a religious state similar to the one that is now in place in Afghanistan. And therefore, the authorities here are very much concerned that if they look too close to the U.S. military or to the U.S. government and too close to the military operation against fellow Muslim -- this country is 90 percent Muslim, has a 90 percent Muslim population -- that those terrorist groups, like the IMU, could retaliate against this government and eventually destabilize Uzbekistan and indeed the entire region -- Bobbie.

BATTISTA: Overall, Alessio, how does the power in Uzbekistan as well as the people, how do they feel about this war on terrorism and in particular Osama bin Laden? Do they feel like the United States is going after the right culprit?

VINCI: Yes, definitely, they do think so. I would say as far as the government and the president is concerned, one must remind you that this is pretty much a totalitarian country. Islam Karimov was a former Communist Party boss. He has been elected president in 1991 and he's remained in power ever since, running this country and ruling this country very much with an iron fist.

Imagine, there are no opposition parties in this country. Religious freedom is extremely tight, if you want. There is not much that people can worship outside government-sanctioned -- -sanctioned mosques. And of course, there are no independent media as such, and nationwide, only a few television stations across the country.

So the -- as far as the president is concerned, he has said that he is willing to help the U.S. fight the war against terrorism, because he's hoping also to be able to get rid of the IMU, the Islamic terrorists that have been threatening him at the same time.

As far as the people are concerned, it's a bit different. It's very -- this is a country where people don't really have much say. There are no real opinion polls that indicate whether the people are behind this military operation in Afghanistan. However, we have been able to speak to many people here while we've been here this week, and most of them are telling us that they do support a military operation against Osama bin Laden, against the terrorists groups, against -- in Afghanistan. They pretty much understand that is a war against a terrorist group and not a war against Islam, Bobbie.

BATTISTA: All right, Alessio Vinci, thank you very much for joining us.

And with us now is CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel, Andrea, why the other three countries now: Oman, Egypt, Saudi Arabia? What are the -- what are their concerns?

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's different in each country, Bobbie. In Saudi Arabia, obviously, there is a large U.S. air base there. It's called Prince Sultan, and that also is the home to a big command-and-control center that the U.S. could use should it decide to take military action in Afghanistan.

However, I'm told by various U.S. officials that they probably wouldn't want to use Prince Sultan to launch any kind of attacks against Afghanistan because it's too far away. This would be the sort of thing, if the campaign were to extend to broaden beyond Afghanistan into other parts perhaps in the Middle East, that obviously Saudi Arabia would be well-situated.

In Oman, they also have a large air base there in the southeastern corner. They also border Saudi Arabia. They would be able to accommodate larger U.S. aircraft. We're talking about B-52s and long-range bombers, and I'm told also that the Omani government is more accommodating at the moment and would -- would consider this type of an operation.

Finally, in Egypt, our understanding is that it isn't so much about military that Secretary Rumsfeld will be talking with the government there about as much as it is intelligence.

The No. 2, bin Laden's No. 2, came from Egypt. He's now believed to be in Afghanistan. But obviously, the Egyptians have gathered a tremendous amount of intel that they could provide to the United States, perhaps more than what they've done thus far.

There's also a footnote to that. You just heard Alessio say that one of the things that we heard from the Uzbeki government is that they would try to keep a lid on the press there. There's very positive public reaction among the Uzbeki people to trying to nip out the al Qaeda terrorist network.

But in Egypt, the press is portraying a much different story. I'm told by one Arab journalist who reads the local papers every day, he said that there's a lot of inflammatory language there, not really buying what the U.S. is saying, that this was a terrorist attack launched by these al Qaeda terrorists and in fact throwing out stories like this was something that was remote-controlled and may have been linked in some way or another to the Oklahoma City bombings.

So perhaps Secretary Rumsfeld will also be talking to the Egyptian government about clamping down a bit on the media. It is a state-controlled media there. BATTISTA: Getting intelligence cooperation out of Egypt, I would think, might involve some negotiation, but basically the secretary has said that he is not negotiating with these countries. So is he basically spelling out a plan and saying, you're either with us or you're against us?

And while you're -- while we're talking here, Andrea, let me just point out that the president is returning to the White House at this hour in Marine One there, landing on the White House lawn. He was in New York earlier today to address a group of schoolchildren at an elementary school in the city.

So anyway, Andrea, go ahead.

KOPPEL: I would say that yes, obviously, the message continues to be you're either with us or against us. But again, in each country, Secretary Rumsfeld is going to have a different mission. The U.S. is going to need different things from different countries, obviously. If this does escalate into a military confrontation, various countries can provide different air bases, whether it be in Uzbekistan, right next door to Afghanistan, or farther away in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Egypt again is looked at as a big partner in terms of the intelligence-gathering and the intelligence-sharing that could help to find out where the al Qaeda cells are located and how they're getting their money and things of that nature -- Bobbie.

BATTISTA: And when is the secretary expected back and will we -- we'll hear about the results of this trip?

KOPPEL: Well, we have our military affairs correspondent, Jamie McIntrye, who's traveling with him, and I'm sure as usual he'll do a wonderful job in telling us about what's happening on the ground during Secretary Rumsfeld's trip. But it's supposed to last about four days, Bobbie, so it's a real whirlwind swing through both Central Asia and the Middle East.

You could also say that perhaps the fact that Secretary Rumsfeld is making this trip now, that the U.S. is leaning increasingly toward taking some sort of military action, and that is why you would want to have the secretary of defense make this type of a trip.

BATTISTA: All right. Comments from the audience here quickly. Robert, go ahead.

ROBERT: Hello. It would seem that each of these countries has their own security agency, obviously, and they've been collecting data for years on terrorists: especially if you have a terrorist in your own backyard, like Osama bin Laden, they've got lots of information. And I believe that they already know he's guilty, and I think that diplomatically it's not possible for them to say so.

They would look bad in the world. They need some time to be able to get their own people behind them, because some of these governments are unstable. How long do we give them, what's a reasonable amount of time that we give them, and then we say, look, if you're not going to be on our side, then get out of our way.

BATTISTA: And Andrea, that sort of begs the question also: Is it intelligence, do you think, or military commitment that's more important to the secretary?

KOPPEL: I think both are equally important to the secretary, Bobbie. Intelligence, because this is a worldwide network. We've heard the administration say that over and over again, and it isn't as simple as saying we're going to bomb Afghanistan and that will be the end of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

It has cells literally, as we've seen, in this country, all over the world, and so you need each country to be sharing the intelligence that it may have, whether it be Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, any of these countries so that you can help to nip out the intelligence.

But if this does move on to military operation as it looks increasingly as if it will, then you're going to need different military help from a variety of different countries right now, because the focus is on Afghanistan and the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and his network. We're talking perhaps more about countries in Central Asia.

All right, Alessio Vinci and Andrea Koppel, thank you both very much for joining us. And again, we saw the president, commander in chief arriving back at the White House from an earlier trip to New York on this day.

We'll take a break and be back in just a moment. Don't go away.

Still ahead on "TALKBACK LIVE: America Speaks Out": did U.S. intelligence let the country down?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHELBY: We've got to have better agents. We've got to solicit and train some of the best and brightest for human intelligence.

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BATTISTA: You mean the U.S. intelligence community doesn't already have all that? Why not?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Welcome back.

On the plane to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia today, as we mentioned earlier, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he has a little bit of a handle on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but doesn't have the coordinates.

Beyond the location of bin Laden, the question on the minds of a lot of people is where was U.S. intelligence when terrorists were planning their attack on America. We have brought in some experts for you. Stanley Bedlington spent 17 years as a British police officer in the Middle East and Asia. He has worked for both the U.S. State Department and the CIA, where he was a senior analyst in the office of counterterrorism.

Ron Kessler is an investigative journalist and author of several books, including "The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency" and "Inside the CIA." And Frank Gaffney is a former assistant secretary of defense and currently director of the Center for Security Policy.

Gentlemen, welcome to all of you. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted yesterday that the United States had a lot of signs that these attacks might happen but they were never able to put together enough information to prevent them. Is that a failure of intelligence, Stanley?

STANLEY BEDLINGTON, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: No, I don't think so. This was not a failure of intelligence so much as a systemic failure on the part of the U.S. government. It's failure of airport security. It's a failure of immigration. It's a failure of law enforcement. And of course, there is a certain element of intelligence failure, too, but I think it's grossly unfair to assign the blame to the CIA.

BATTISTA: Frank, do you agree with that, or if you don't, who do you think should be held accountable?

FRANK GAFFNEY, FORMER ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, I think it certainly was a systemic failure, and I think that the failure of intelligence was real and predictable.

The problem that you describe, Bobbie, is endemic in intelligence work. It's almost always the case that there's information available that afterwards looking back you can understand was the relevant information. It's the challenge of parsing out what's called the signals from the noise that is the art of intelligence.

I just think that the systemic problem with respect to American intelligence has been we haven't been bringing to bear the human assets both in terms of overseas undercover operatives penetrating these close-knit cells, a very difficult and very dangerous job, and here at home, where we need desperately to improve the quality of analysis and particularly the language skills that we can bring to bear to parsing out the noise from the signals.

BATTISTA: At the same time, Ron, it's just one of those things where you go, you know, what -- what signs did we miss? I mean, how could this happen?

RON KESSLER, AUTHOR, "INSIDE THE CIA": Well, first of all, you know, it's really a failure by all of us, because we all were aware of these terrorist acts that had been committed on us. We were all aware of the threats. We read about them in the newspaper. We read that bin Laden -- said he was going to kill Americans. And yet, none of us reacted the way we should have in those respects. Think of how difficult it would been to penetrate the inner circle of Hitler during World War II. Penetrating the inner circle of bin Laden is probably 10 times more difficult, because, first of all, of course, you have to be from the Middle East, you have to be a Muslim. And also, these people are not often willing to die for their beliefs, but they expect to die for their beliefs. And they don't care about money. There was $5 million reward on bin Laden's head and yet nobody turned him in.

That doesn't mean that we can't do much, much more. We can and we have to. But to say that it's a failure, implying that we automatically should have known this as if we could just turn on a TV set and see this happening, is unfair and shows a misunderstanding of how intelligence works and how law enforcement works.

Because you -- you know, just think of how difficult it would to detect a bank robbery. That's a very simple example. Obviously, bin Laden was a known target. We were trying to penetrate. But you can't simply say, because a crime occurred, therefore, it's a failure of our government.

BATTISTA: Well, let me try to -- try to, the audience and myself, wrap ourselves around this just a little bit more. When you guys talk about a systemic failure within the agency or agencies, there was an op-ed piece in "The Wall Street Journal" yesterday or today by Herb Meyer (ph), who worked for the CIA under Ron Reagan, and I -- it was a fascinating op-ed piece, and it talked about how, you know, the agency used to be in a more offensive mode and then turned into more of a defensive type of agency. And I'm wondering if you could explain that a little bit and why he thinks that's at the root of the cause.

GAFFNEY: I...

BATTISTA: Yeah.

GAFFNEY: I would offer...

BATTISTA: Go ahead, Frank.

GAFFNEY: ... if I may, the essence of the problem is, as Ron was just saying, there's almost nothing you can do to protect an open and free society all the time against every possible threat. That doesn't mean that if you fail to see those threats coming, that's not a failure.

But what I think Herb Meyer is saying -- and I'm delighted that you've called people's attention to it -- this very important essay is when it was World War II and the OSS, or when it was the height of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan, the determination of the president and his intelligence chiefs was to go on offense, to take the fight to these enemies, in the course of which you learn more about them, of course, but also are bent on trying to prevent them from being able to operate effectively against you.

And that's what I think really needs to be done here, and we need some new leadership, I think, at the CIA as well as presidential direction to make that kind of transformation.

BATTISTA: Stanley, I think the reason that, you know, the agency has gone through this sort of back-and-forth between being offensive and defensive is that when they are offensive that kind of drives Congress crazy, doesn't it? I mean, should they have more powers and more leeway?

BEDLINGTON: Bobbie, you've made a very important point. If you go back to 1995, there was somewhat of a furor that took place in Guatemala. A lot of blames was attached to the agency for recruiting, quote/unquote, "villains." And from that point onward, the agency stepped back somewhat from recruiting the sort of people it ought to be recruiting. If you don't recruit villains, then you won't get the information you require. This has been a major failing.

The other point I would like to make -- you mentioned human intelligence. If you look at budget for the CIA or for the intelligence community allocated by President Clinton -- the counterterrorist community, there was $11.2 billion for this year. The vast majority of that money went for cybersystem protection and also for building protection. Only a very relatively small amount was allocated for human intelligence collection.

KESSLER: Bobbie, can I say something?

BATTISTA: Go ahead, Ron.

KESSLER: At the FBI they get thousands of threats a year. They can't pursue them all. They in addition have been restricted in a very nonsensical way when it comes to wiretapping. It doesn't mean that anybody wants to infringe on civil liberties or break the Constitution.

But when you have to get a court order each time you tap a particular phone as opposed to following the individual, it means that a terrorist for example can go to one phone, then get a disposable cell phone, then go to a pay phone -- and each time FBI has to get a new court order. Obviously, by the time they get a new order that person is on to another phone. It's simply a matter of keeping up with the technology, and yet there has been opposition to allowing the FBI to do that.

BATTISTA: I have to take a quick break, here, as we do a couple of e-mails. Terry in Colorado says, "We reduced our spending on intelligence since the end of the Cold War. Why are we surprised when diminished resources result in intelligence failures?" James in Florida says, "The failure was letting these people in the country in the first place and not questioning why they were here. If someone does not support democracy then they should not be allowed in this country." We will be back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Welcome back. We have a number of questions and points I want to get to. I'm going to go to Tom in the audience. You have a good question. Go ahead, Tom. TOM: My question was, I was wondering if the CIA or any covert organization had a think tank group of guys that maybe sit around and try to conceive of ways that terrorists could cause harm to the United States. It is apparent to most of us that nobody had an idea that they would take planes loaded with fuel and fly them into these buildings. It seems to me that they part of the CIA's job would have been to anticipate any way possible, because it just seems like it was way too easy for them to do.

BATTISTA: I may be wrong, but I think in that report on terrorism didn't they -- they actually did anticipate this scenario and they didn't want to put it in the report because they thought people would be so horrified by it and they didn't want to put that idea out there. Is that true?

KESSLER: I think that is probably true. But the main responsibility for preventing terrorism is with the FBI and the FBI in the late '80s did try to come up with a program for protecting different industries and in the end they couldn't get the funds. I think the power industry is the only one they finally focused on. So again, this is something that needs to be addressed. Resources have to be increased and there has to be more focus on protecting the U.S.

GAFFNEY: Bobbie, I think a lot of work is done trying to game out these threats. I think there is in fact what they call a red team that has been assigned to do this on an ongoing basis. But I think one of the lessons that I hope all Americans take away from this 11 September experience is we have as a country accepted -- and in fact, established as a matter of policy -- the idea that being vulnerable is a good thing.

It started in 1972, when we decided we wouldn't to protect ourselves against ballistic missiles. It didn't much sense if we weren't going to do that to defend ourselves against airplanes and bombers. And it flowed from that, that civil defense and even defending our airspace against these kinds of threats were just considered to be too hard.

We have to get away from that, and I am very heartened by the effort the president has announced to work on homeland defense and I think both improved intelligence in terms of the CIA looking inside and the federal bureau of investigations looking inside is an indispensable part of enhancing our security and ending this deliberate and crazy policy of vulnerability.

BATTISTA: Let me just clarify what you mean by looking outside the agency. That is a little like what they did in earlier times, also, like they took the best brains from the areas of finance or police work or computer science.

GAFFNEY: This was the point that Herb Meyer was making.

BATTISTA: And they're not doing...

GAFFNEY: What I meant is they're looking outside of the country. But he is saying, when you go on offense, you look outside of the government and the intelligence community for people with skills and contacts and capabilities that you really need for offensive intelligence operations.

BATTISTA: Stanley, they have not been doing that because of money, for the most part?

BEDLINGTON: I don't think that it is a question of money. I think it is a question of -- I left the agency six ago -- but I think it is a question of trying to satisfy the values of the community at large in terms of recruitment.

KESSLER: I think it is also important to remember that despite the fact that Herb Meyer made some good points in that points, that the CIA in the old days was not anything that we want to go back to, nor go back to the FBI in the old days. Because the CIA in the old days would try to carry out these plots against Fidel Castro, for example, to try to get rid of his beard, all these silly, foolish things which got nowhere and just got everyone in a lot of trouble. The same with the FBI.

BATTISTA: Then again, taking people out preemptively is getting a lot more support after what happened on September 11th.

KESSLER: Definitely. There has been much more of an aggressive approach, but it needs to be focused and within the law, as opposed to the old days.

GAFFNEY: It does have to be within the law, obviously, but I think that the world would have been a lot better off if people like Fidel Castro had not afflicting his people and a great many others around the world through these three past decades.

The point basically is this. I think we need an intelligence capability that is part and parcel of the offensive power projection, if you will, of this country. And you will need capabilities that we don't have today, partly because of money -- but I think mostly because we have not -- and Stan can attest to this -- we have not valued the human part of intelligence adequately for a long time.

We have been investing instead on very sophisticated technical means of monitoring arms control treaties and doing other kinds of intelligence collection, which all have their place but not at the expense of the old-fashioned business. We are absolutely clear it is a very difficult business to do the old-fashioned job of intelligence, but it has to be done in this kind of environment.

BATTISTA: Let me go to Jackie in the audience here, quickly. Jackie, you wanted to react to Tom.

JACKIE: Right. In comment about what Tom was saying about having a think tank and a CIA think tank: the mere fact that this country is built on freedoms and civil liberties and the fact that anybody can come into to this country and enjoy those freedoms and civil liberties -- these terrorist hate us for that very fact, that we do have freedoms and we do have civil liberties. Although they are willing to come in here, take advantage of our freedoms and civil liberties, learn what they need to learn about taking out our planes, and taking out our buildings and everything like that and then go back to where they came from and use those tactics against us. I don't know that given the fact that we pride ourselves on these freedoms and civil liberties that we will ever be able to 100 percent eradicate these people from doing this, or else we diminish our entire country.

BEDLINGTON: Can I respond to that?

BATTISTA: Yes. Go ahead.

BEDLINGTON: It is a very major point, trying to make the collection of intelligence compatible with civil liberties. I can tell you from my own personal knowledge that every office now in the CIA has in it a lawyer who is specifically assigned to that particular office in order to look at operations and make then certain they are quite compatible with the laws of this country.

BATTISTA: Sheila is on the phone in Tennessee. Go ahead, Sheila.

SHEILA: Hi, Bobbie. I am concerned that Congress will not pass the laws that John Ashcroft needs to fight terrorism. In one sense this will be like a Vietnam. We'll have to fight with one arm tied behind our back because we are so afraid we're going to offend civil liberties.

BATTISTA: I don't know that...

GAFFNEY: That's a real concern. It's related, I would say, Bobbie, in the sense that the federal bureau of investigations, FBI, has got to be able to do some of the things that we were talking about earlier without permissions, without legal authority that does not exist today. For example, following the terrorist no matter which phone he is using to wiretap and monitor his conversations and his plans. John Ashcroft and indeed our law enforcement authorities more generally are really being handicapped. That has to be fixed.

KESSLER: Another example of how the FBI is hampered. A few years ago there was a terrorist group that sent a courier to Florida. There was information that he was a courier. The FBI followed him, found out that he was going back and forth to the Middle East. Took photographs, found out that he did associate with other terrorists and yet they could not get a wiretap on him, because there was not enough probable cause. That is something also that needs to be addressed. If we really want to find out what these people are doing and really want to be ahead of the curve, we have to have the means to allow the FBI to their job.

BATTISTA: Let me jump in with this e-mail here, because I sort of felt the same way. Tom in Texas says, "Some of the hijackers were on the FBI and the CIA watch list, and known to be associated with Bin Laden. Why did we even have a list, let alone a watch list? And if they were known associates, why were they allowed to stay in this country? Should we not find out who was not watching those on the watch list?"

I understand what he is saying. If they were on a watch list, why were they not under almost constant surveillance?

KESSLER: There was a two-week lag between the time they came in and the FBI learned that they were here and the actually bombing or attack. So the FBI had not had time to find them. People object to the idea of a standard identification card that would be foolproof or close to foolproof, and that is something that really is needed to try to keep track of people that come into the this country and then disappear. And again, there is no reason to think of that as an infringement on civil liberties any more than it is to have a driver's license and have to show that as identification.

GAFFNEY: Bobbie, can I make a related point?

BATTISTA: Quickly, Frank. I've got to take a break.

GAFFNEY: It's very important. The president met with Muslim groups over the past two weeks. One of them has recently urged its members not to talk to the FBI. That is the kind of noncooperation that can undermine our FBI's ability to do its job. It shouldn't be supported, let alone dignified by the president giving them his company.

BATTISTA: I'm glad you mentioned that, because we didn't get to talking much about info sharing. But Stanley Bedlington, Ron Kessler, and Frank Gaffney, thank you all very much for enlightening us today.

BEDLINGTON: Thank you very much.

BATTISTA: We keep hearing, the time is near, time is up, the time has come. In a moment, talking war with Major General Don Shepperd. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Joining us now is retired Major General Don Shepperd. He is the former head of the Air National Guard and a CNN military analyst. General Shepperd, good to see you.

We should start by first saying that the administration says there are not on anybody's timetable but their own, so we understand that. But we have also heard the word imminent used by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that an attack is imminent. We have heard the administration make hints toward the fact that an attack could be coming at any time now.

What does that mean, imminent? Does it mean two days, two months or what?

RET. MAJOR GENERAL DON SHEPPERD, AIR NATIONAL GUARD: Well, we don't want anybody to know. But here are a couple of things that are very important. We could have struck within hours from the United States, from air power that is already in the Gulf and from the Navy ships in the area. We did not. We wanted to amass the intelligence to make sure that when we're going after something we go after the right thing. We will strike at a time and place of our choosing. And when they say imminent, I think everybody can fill in the blanks. It will be fairly soon.

BATTISTA: Well, we -- maybe I should say, how much will we necessary know about that when and if it happens?

SHEPPERD: I think we need to steel ourselves for something. We have been warned that this will be different, and yet all of us are still thinking about Desert Storm, where we woke up and we saw the initial attacks going on. We may not see that this time around. This may be a much lower-level conflict with not a lot of bombs going off. It may be done by special forces, and it may be stretched out for a long period of time. So we have to be -- we have to get ourselves used to the fact that this could be totally different from anything we've seen before, and much longer and protracted.

BATTISTA: Let ask you something from a strategic and psychological viewpoint. When does it become a negative thing for leaders to keep saying that something is imminent and then we all wait and keep waiting and biding our time?

SHEPPERD: We talk about centers of gravity. And currently the center of gravity -- the important thing to the Taliban and the terrorists are Bin Laden himself and the Taliban leadership. The center of gravity for them against us is American public opinion, American patience, and of course world public opinion. We must be very careful and thoughtful about what we do so we are not perceived as going in to change a regime and establish a puppet regime of our own.

So we are going to be very careful and our patience is going to be tested. Imminent may mean -- again, it may mean within the next couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of months. But whenever it comes, it's going to protracted over a long period of time. And we're all thinking Afghanistan. This may be much more wide sweeping in many more places than we're imagining.

BATTISTA: Questions from some veterans in our audience. William, go ahead.

WILLIAM: Thank you. As a veteran who has studied military history, it seems to me that every time you read about guerrilla warfare, terrorism warfare, the only successful route is destroy the base of operations, i.e. the Taliban. Are we planning on doing that?

SHEPPERD: That's really an excellent question. Our president has been very careful not to say that the Taliban is a target. But again, I can fill in the blanks for myself. When he says if they don't turn Bin Laden over they are going to suffer the consequences, that is not very mysterious to me.

We must be careful that we do not play their game. We want to play our kind of war. We don't want to get in a protracted person-to- person guerrilla warfare where we have to go in and root them out cave by cave. That is playing their game. This is going to be, I think, much more high tech and conducted much more intelligently than we have perceived so far. Time is on our side, not theirs. Remember, when they are hiding in those caves they are not attacking Americans in this country, so it also serves a purpose to make sure that they are worried and in their hideouts.

BATTISTA: Since the Secretary of Defense is in Uzbekistan and we certainly know the crucial role of Pakistan in this, can you comment a little bit on their importance and how much we hopefully can rely on them?

SHEPPERD: Because of where Afghanistan is, the surrounding area is very important. Who would have thought in their right mind that we would be flying through the airspace and perhaps even operating out of the bases of the 'Stans, the former soviet Republics Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, even Kyrgyzstan. Unbelievable. Pakistan is very key.

But they have a difficult problem in their own country; the actions by President Musharraf have been nothing short of heroic. But he has to balance those against public opinion in his own country. We do not want to lose the relationship with Pakistan. We don't want to see that regime tumble.

But remember, Pakistan is the only country left with relationships with the Taliban, and that is very important that we be able to talk to them through someone else. So it is very, very important and key that we maintain that key relationship.

BATTISTA: Joan, comment or question.

JOAN: I really wonder if we can trust Uzbekistan. We know that the Russians used Uzbekistan as a base and we know what happened to the Russians. They got clobbered by Afghans. Should we feel that we can truly trust Uzbekistan? We don't want to make the same mistakes that the Russians made.

SHEPPERD: I remember two sayings. One of them is President's Reagan's (UNINTELLIGIBLE). In other words, trust but verify. Rhetoric and words are one things, actions are another. These people are providing us airspace and bases, and those things may go up and down over a period of time, so we have to see how this plays out. The other thing by president, the former President Bush's wife Barbara is, "You dance with the one that brought you." You have to operate with the situation as you see it. You have to have make friends and allies where they are and where they will have you. And then you work this changing pattern.

We all focus on military as the most important thing. I must say that the diplomatic activity by our State Department, our brave diplomats on the front line, just like soldiers, has been nothing short of astounding. This diplomacy is masterful and books will be written about it for decades to come.

BATTISTA: Let me go to a final comment from Jiad (ph) in our audience. He is from Jordan. Go ahead. JIAD: Yes, my comment is that I have said earlier that a lot of the U.S. government intelligence, let's put it this way. They are dealing with the problem of the terrorism and many problems that are surrounding us today. Just like Muslim doctors, as we mentioned earlier, treat common cold. They go after the symptoms instead of going after the cold. We go back to the point of addressing the Palestinian-Israeli issue. That has to be addressed and it should have been addressed since 1967, where it has been used and abused as an excuse for some of these terrorists throughout the world.

BATTISTA: I am completely out of time. General and Jiad, thank you very much. General Shepperd, we appreciate you joining us, as always. Thank you. Thanks to all of you in our studio audience and you at home. "TALKBACK LIVE: America Speaks Out" will return tomorrow at 3:00 with CNN legal analyst Roger Cossack filling in for me. Join us then.

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