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American Morning
Interview With Michael Elliot
Aired November 05, 2001 - 09:11 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: Two months ago, few Americans had ever heard of al Qaeda. Since September 11th, it has become a household word. And now just in time, a revealing cover story on al Qaeda called "hate club." Here to tell us much more about it is the author of the article, Michael Elliott, who is the editor at large for Time Magazine. Good to see you. Good morning.
MICHAEL ELLIOT, EDITOR AT LARGE, TIME MAGAZINE: Good to see you, Paula.
ZAHN: For people who haven't had a chance to have the luxury of getting their copy of Time early, describe to them, how widespread this network is.
ELLIOT: Enormously widespread. What we tried to do this week was to say, "7 weeks after, how much do we know?" Let's just kind of talk to all our correspondents, literally all over the world, all the experts that we know, see how much we can put together. And I guess we discovered two big things that surprised me, and I've been following this for some time.
ZAHN: Like what?
ELLIOT: First of all, that al Qaeda is a network that is far more globally pervasive than any of us expected.
ZAHN: Can I can read something that you wrote along those lines --
ELLIOT: Yes, sure.
ZAHN: -- because we actually have a full screen to reinforce it. You say, "perhaps the single most important truth learned in 7 weeks is the existence of a creepy camaraderie, an international bond among terrorists. Those ties are forged in Afghanistan."
ELLIOT: Absolutely. And that's a very, very important point. I had not understood until we did this work just how central the camps are to the network. One of the things that you discover, if you kind of start doing work in al Qaeda, is that most of the knowledge, most of the learning is in Europe. It's not here.
ZAHN: Right. ELLIOT: And one of the European investigators said to us, he said, the one thing that absolutely every international Islamist has in common, the one thing they have in common, is that they've been to the camps. It is in the the camps where people forge a camaraderie, where people know how to trust each other, where people forge links, where people establish stature. There's a terrific holy warrior, so that when six months or a year or two years later the word goes out, this is the operation, this is the logistics guy, this is the finance guy, these are the soldiers, this is the muscle, everyone knows how to trust each other. So the camps are a really important part of the global structure. The other thing that we discovered was that within al Qaeda, there is a kind of motivating ideology, if you like, that goes by the name "taqlid wal hijra" which was developed in Egypt in the 1960's, and which is a extraordinarily, extraordinarily extremist form of Islamic thought.
ZAHN: A completely perverted form, people have said.
ELLIOT: I -- people -- all Islamic scholars that we have spoken to said, "look, you know, this is the minority of the minority of the minority. This is -- this is perverted." It treats, as it were, nonbelieving Muslims in exactly the same way as it would treat Christians and Jews. And, if you noticed bin Laden's comments at the weekend, were directed not towards you and me --
ZAHN: Towards Muslims --
ELLIOT: -- directly, directly towards Muslims, which is a very kind of taqliri thing to do. Unbelievely ruthless. Extraordinarily undemocratic. What European investigators tell us, which is genuinely worrying, I think, is that operatives in al Qaeda that have this taqliri ideology make it a point to blend into communities. They don't feel they have go to Mosques because that would be associating with nonperfect Muslims.
ZAHN: And it could put up a flag, too --
ELLIOT: -- and it puts up a red flag. They'll eat during Ramadan, they'll drink alcohol, they'll date western girls, they'll go to bars. They'll go to discos.
ZAHN: Sounds just like the behavior of these hijackers.
ELLIOT: Sounds exactly like behavior of the hijackers. We spoke to one poor guy, the cousin of one of the suspected pilots. He runs a little tratoria (ph) in a town in Northern Germany, and his cousin, now dead, ostensibly the pilot of the plane that crashed into Philadelphia -- into Pennsylvania, said, you know, he said, "he was a normal guy, we used to go to discos together, we didn't want to dance with girls with veils. We wanted to dance with European girls. He used to drink whiskey at parties. He was a 'normal' guy." Well, of course, finding normal guys --
ZAHN: Well, that's the challenge. So how successfully have these people blended into American society?
ELLIOT: I think --
ZAHN: There are active cells, right?
ELLIOT: Yes, I mean -- I think -- I would go so far as to say there are active support networks. I don't think we can put our hands on our heart and say there are active operational cells. There may well be, there may well be. But I think what we can say with a degree of certainty is that there are active support networks. I think that has been pretty clear. I do, though, think that the main focus of al Qaeda operations, right now, is probably not in the United States actually.
ZAHN: Well, originally wasn't even the intent. (CROSSTALK) -- directed against Egypt --
ELLIOT: Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I mean the corrupt governments of Islamic states.
ZAHN: So what you are saying is what?
ELLIOT: I think -- I think there is more action in Europe, right now, than there is here. I mean we are --
ZAHN: And that is not to say that an attack in Europe is much more likely than an attack here at home.
ELLIOT: Absolutely not, no. But I mean the immigrant communities in Europe, it turns out, are extraordinarily -- what's the the word I'm looking for -- easy places for terrorists to blend into, which is why a lot of the learning on the structure of this organization, now, is best found if you go to Paris and London and Berlin and Rome and talk to people there rather than talk to people here.
ZAHN: Which is exactly what your correspondents did. Fascinating story, because we have all heard these details, but until you see them woven together like you did in this article, it makes it much easier to comprehend. Michael Elliot, thanks for dropping by.
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