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American Morning

Massachusetts Research Company Clones First Human Cells; U.S. Marines on the Ground; Exactly Where is Osama Bin Laden?

Aired November 26, 2001 - 07:30   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: U.S. Marines on the ground in the Taliban's last major stronghold -- a major new phase in the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And tracking down Osama bin Laden, new reports about his possible location. Are U.S. troops closing in?

And a few tiny cells stir a huge ethical dilemma. Is the goal to create cloned human beings or just to make stem cell to treat disease?

Good morning. Thanks so much for being with us as we start a brand new week here. It is Monday, November 26. From New York, I'm Paula Zahn.

The big questions we'll be working on this morning, what is the mission of U.S. marines now on the ground in southern Afghanistan? We'll run that by our military experts.

How close are we to getting bin Laden? New detailed accounts point to where he might be hiding. We will discuss that with bin Laden's official biographer and with a former CIA officer.

And are human clones the next step? The possibility has enormous implications. We will begin by explaining in very simple terms exactly what scientists did and did not accomplish in the laboratory.

First, though, the latest headlines. For that, we turn to Miles O'Brien, who's standing by in Atlanta with our war alert -- hi, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Here's what's happening. U.S. marines have landed in southern Afghanistan, specifically near Kandahar, the last Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. It's the vanguard of a force that will eventually number at least 1,200 troops. Heavy fighting is reported in and around that city.

The marines and their equipment began arriving yesterday by helicopter, launching from a navy ship in the Arabian Sea. The Pentagon says the full marine force will be on the ground within the next 24 hours.

In northern Afghanistan, the city of Konduz is now under the control of Northern Alliance forces. Taliban fighters surrendered the city yesterday. Crowds of people have been pouring into the city's square, many in celebration. Meanwhile, our correspondents report sporadic gunfire in the city. Unclear where it is coming from.

As Konduz fell, Taliban prisoners staged a bloody revolt. About 300 non-Afghan Taliban smuggled grenades and other weapons into the prison near Mazir-i-Sharif. Hundreds were reportedly killed, including one American. The Pentagon says no U.S. military personnel were killed in the uprising. Officials say U.S. air strikes were called in to help quell the violence.

Back in the U.S., a Massachusetts high school will open this morning after officials uncovered an alleged bomb plot. A police sweep of New Bedford High School yesterday found no explosives. Police arrested three teens for allegedly plotting a Columbine style attack. They will be arraigned in court this morning. A school janitor found a letter detailing an alleged plot to occur on a Monday, but it did not specify a date.

An ethical controversy now at the leading edge of science. A Massachusetts research company has cloned the first human cells. The announcement has drawn criticism from political and religious leaders. Some scientists say a line has been crossed, but the company says the breakthrough may help save lives.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen picks it up from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you needed a new liver, you could go to a transplant bank and search for the best genetic match. But no match is perfect and your body might reject it. What if scientists could make a liver in a laboratory that matched yours perfectly?

A company called Advance Cell Technology in Massachusetts has taken steps towards doing just that. They created embryos that are clones, exact genetic replicas of the person who supplied the DNA.

To explain the medical significance, let's say scientists wanted to make a new liver for Jane Doe. First, they would take a woman's engine and remove the DNA. Then they'd take some DNA from Jane Doe and put it into the hollowed out egg. Then they would expose this new egg to chemicals that would change its electrical charge, making the egg divide into an embryo.

That's how far scientists at Advanced Cell Technology took it. The hope is that in the future that embryo could be used to create medical therapies. The embryo would stay at the microscope stage. Scientists would open it up, where inside there are stem cells. Stem cells have the potential to grow into anything, so scientists would take the stem cells out and treat them in such a way that they'd grow into a liver, theoretically with no fear that her body would reject it, since only Jane Doe's DNA was used to make the liver.

(on camera): When told this way, the benefits of cloning seem obvious. You potentially create body parts that are perfect matches.

But here's the big worry. What if instead of creating just body parts in a lab, someone took an embryo and implanted it into a woman's womb? Then nine months later you could have a human clone and most people think human cloning is abhorrently unethical.

(voice-over): Advanced Cell Technologies says they would never, ever create a baby, just medical treatments. But the president of the company admits by publishing their study, they're helping people who do want to clone human beings. In fact, they've given would be cloners two recipes for cloning a human, the way we described earlier, and a completely new method. They took a woman's egg without changing it and then exposed it to the chemicals, forming an embryo.

Advanced Cell Technologies says they've given the world two new ways to potentially revolutionize medical science. But critics fear the technology could also be the key to Pandora's box.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Obviously lots of questions here. We'll have more on this cloning controversy the next hour. Paula will be talking with the president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology about the breakthrough and its purpose and a Florida congressman will join us to talk about the ethics of cloning, as well. That's in our next hour. And we will send it back to Paula for now.

ZAHN: Thanks, Miles.

U.S. Marines are on the ground, as we've been reporting all morning, in southern Afghanistan. And by this time tomorrow, there could well be over 1,000 leathernecks near Kandahar.

CNN's Nic Robertson is monitoring developments from along the Pakistan border. He has the very latest from there -- Nic, good morning.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Just behind us is the Afghan town of Spin Boldak. It is a main border town coming into Pakistan. Now, a little while ago a Taliban official came from that town into Pakistan here. We spoke with him. He told us that at this time tribal leaders want the Taliban to negotiate to surrender Spin Boldak. He said that is not an option and negotiations are not going on because the tribal leaders demand too much. They want the Taliban to completely surrender their heavy weapons. He said that's not possible at this time.

So for the moment, Spin Boldak remains under the control of the Taliban.

Earlier, seven young Taliban fighters crossed into Pakistan. Pakistani officials here sent them back into Afghanistan. They said they did not have the proper documentation and would not harbor them here inside Pakistan.

We've also been talking with truck drivers who have been driving the three hour drive northwest of here to the city of Kandahar. They say from what they can see, they haven't seen any U.S. troops. They road, they say, for the most part, apart from one diversion, appears to be under the control of the Taliban. They do not see any tribal forces out there, either.

They also report from the city of Kandahar, as do our staff in Kandahar, that for the most part during the day Kandahar has been quiet, that it appears to be under the control of the Taliban and a certain amount of business going on as usual.

However, early in the morning there were heavy exchanges of gunfire in and around the city of Kandahar and also around the airport.

Now, the international airport of Kandahar just outside the city of Kandahar, we are also told, remains under the control of the Taliban. However, having talked with the Taliban official here, having talked with people who are leaving Afghanistan, it is clear there are a lot of mixed feelings inside Afghanistan at the moment. There is a lot of apprehension about what is going to happen and a lot of anxiety being expressed about how events are going to turn out in the next few days, a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen -- Paula.

ZAHN: Nic Robertson, thanks so much for that report.

Back to the issue of the leathernecks now on the ground in southern Afghanistan. They are a part of what's being called a marine expeditionary unit or MEU for short.

CNN military analyst retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd now joins me with some insights -- good morning, General.

We know that this is the first action the marines have seen in the war in Afghanistan and the Pentagon isn't disclosing what their precise mission is. Do you have any ideas this morning?

OK, General, I'm not able to hear you. We're going to double check the audio line here. Let's take one more go at it. General, can you hear me now?

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I can hear you fine.

ZAHN: All right, give us your judgment, your best judgment on what you think the marines are doing on the ground there.

SHEPPERD: Well, my judgment is that General Franks has got them there, is in reinforced battalion strength, one reinforced battalion from each one of the MEUs. They've got a thousand people of the 2,100 in each one of the MEUs capable of deploying. They're a self- contained fighting force with artillery, with vehicles, even tanks, mortars. They are capable of carrying out any mission that he wants.

They are probably there in anticipation of going after bin Laden and the al Qaeda cells, in other words, to reinforce the special operations forces that are there. You don't send 12 people into a cave looking for bin Laden amongst 2,000 or 3,000 Arab fighters. So these give additional on the ground capability to deploy quickly with helicopters whenever General Franks needs them.

ZAHN: Can you imagine that even more marines will be sent in or do you think this will be it?

SHEPPERD: Well, again, a MEU, a marine expeditionary unit has about 2,100 people, of which 1,000 are the reinforced combat element. So right there, with the two MEUs there, the 15th and the 26th MEUs from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Camp Pendleton, California. You've got 2,000 people available. He also can hold an airport with these people and then bring in more army forces.

So it's hard to say what's developing here, but clearly he's establishing the capability for enhanced combat capability to go after al Qaeda and bin Laden.

ZAHN: If they do that, how will that transpire?

SHEPPERD: Well, first of all, you don't just go searching cave to cave, as has been said by several people. What you do is you get your intelligence sensors, you concentrate on a smaller and smaller area. You go into fusion of your intelligence to say OK, it's not just that we've got intelligence, this is where the man is. Then you basically reconnoiter the area, find out what he has got with him and then you set up blocking forces, you set up a large military operation to cut off his ability to flee from the area and then you go after him and get him and you use air assets, as well.

ZAHN: All right, General, we're going to leave it there for now and come back to you a little bit later on this morning.

Thank you very much for that update. Appreciate it.

SHEPPERD: Sure.

ZAHN: And as we just told you, the focus of the war effort is now turning toward the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. That's also the area where Osama bin Laden has thought to be hiding out.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour is standing by in Kabul with the late details -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, two things. On the one hand, we're also hearing from U.K. sources that British forces, SAS and others, are also headed towards Kandahar for what is being described by some as a decisive battle in this coming week. We'll wait and see whether that materializes.

In addition, the Northern Alliance leaders, particularly Dr. Abdullah and President Rabbani of the Northern Alliance, have told CNN and also a press conference that they believe that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, are in the Kandahar region. They say they believe that because most of the rest of the country is under Northern Alliance or other Allied control and they don't think that the two have anywhere else to go.

In addition, Northern Alliance security and intelligence officials are amassing more what they call evidence of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's terrorist activities. CNN was shown the first haul by the Northern Alliance intelligence ministers of documents, of what they call al Qaeda documents, which they say found in a security hideout in Jalalabad and brought here to Kabul.

There were maps they found which showed U.S. interests in the region and showed on the map printed words similar to Osama bin Laden's calling for a holy war against the U.S. They also found stacks of passports from throughout Europe, from Germany and Sweden and Belgium and other such places, also passports from the Arab world, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, other places like that, visa stamps from Pakistani embassies in various countries as well as from Italy, also recipes for the making of poison gases and other poisons like risin (ph) and mustard gas, serin, botulism, all sorts of notes that appear to have been copied about how to make these things, how to use them, the effects of them, the lethal doses.

So all these evidence what they say is being collected to show the trail to the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden and, of course, here, the Northern Alliance is saying that the aim of the U.S. plus the Northern Alliance is to wipe Afghanistan clean of that terrorist network and to make sure it never becomes a base for terrorism in the future -- Paula.

ZAHN: Christiane, thanks so much. Appreciate that.

So exactly where is Osama bin Laden? The "New York Times" reports he has been spotted recently at a fortified location in eastern Afghanistan. It is a small town called Tora Bora. There is no confirmation of that report, but there were enough tantalizing details to make it seem credible to a whole host of new sources.

Pakistani journalist and bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir offers his perspective from Islamabad. Counter-terrorism expert and former CIA officer Larry Johnson comes to us from Washington.

Welcome, gentlemen. Good to have both of you with us this morning.

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Good morning.

ZAHN: So Mr. Mir, do you find the reports credible that Mr. Osama bin Laden may be in this town called Tora Bora?

HAMID MIR, BIN LADEN BIOGRAPHER: No, I don't think that these reports are credible because Tora Bora area is in the control of the U.S. Allies and I think Osama bin Laden is not foolish that he should hide himself in the area which is in the control of the U.S. Allies. I don't think this report is credible. Paula?

ZAHN: And I don't know whether you just heard Christiane Amanpour's report, but her sources tell her it is believed Osama bin Laden is closer to the Kandahar area. Is that more believable to you this morning?

MIR: Yes, I think it's more believable because one very close aide of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Atef, Mohammed Atef alias Abu Hafs, who was killed some days back near Kandahar. So he was in charge of his military operations. So it proves that if the in charge of the military operations was near the Kandahar, it means that maybe Osama bin Laden is also present around Kandahar or inside Kandahar. And the other indication is that all the Taliban troops, they are concentrated in that area and all the Arab and other non-Afghani fighters, they are also concentrated around the Kandahar. So that's why these reports are credible which says that Osama bin Laden is inside Kandahar or around Kandahar.

ZAHN: Mr. Johnson, can you describe to us this morning the kind of intelligence the U.S. and its allies have now in trying to close in on Osama bin Laden?

JOHNSON: Well, what's being done is you're drawing upon all sources. You're drawing upon human intelligence as well as what are called technical means. And it's not just the U.S. You've got a variety of different countries. As pointed out earlier, you've got British forces, you've got Australian forces, you've got Turkish forces. So they're working in a coordinated fashion. All that information is being put together and in putting it together you try to, you've got the advantage here that you don't have to search through an entire country. The focus is narrowing. As, you know, two days ago you could have said Konduz, Kandahar. Now it looks like it's narrowing down to Kandahar.

ZAHN: And what kind of technology specifically is being used? We know that reports seem to indicate that Osama bin Laden is traveling at night by horseback with a very large entourage.

JOHNSON: Well, he's really in a difficult bind because with the technical means that are out there, there is no time of the day or night when he cannot be seen, if a particular area is being monitored. I mean there are aerial platforms that provide video images. There are ways that you can collect signals intelligence.

So he faces a real dilemma. On the one hand, if he stays with his large retinue it's easy to pick him up. On the other hand, if he gets rid of them he looses security, he is left to his own devices and it makes him more vulnerable. So either way he has a very bad choice and that's going to make it easier to get him, not harder.

ZAHN: Mr. Mir, what are the chances that a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle will ultimately turn him in? The reward money now is up to $25 million.

MIR: You see, I don't think that if someone knows about his location inside the Kandahar or outside the Kandahar, I don't think that someone will dare to provide this information to the Americans or to their allies just for getting $25 million because until now Americans are not in a position to provide security and protection to any person who will provide information about Osama bin Laden from Kandahar. So I don't think that the U.S. can get him through $25 million. The only option is to use the ground forces. And I think now the American marines have landed around Kandahar and it's a very clever move because keeping in mind the psychology of Osama bin Laden, I think he was waiting for the arrival of the American troops. And if he comes to know that the American troops are landing in the southern part of Afghanistan, I think he will try to attack them and then the American marines will get a chance to confront him, to tackle him.

ZAHN: Mr. Johnson, do you see this potentially playing out like that, that Osama bin Laden had the expectation that not only U.S. special forces would be on the ground, but ultimately the marines, as well?

JOHNSON: Bin Laden is a legend in his own mind. I mean this man is a coward. He's not some warrior chief who's going to be out there on the front lines. He's, you know, he's been willing to send others to die for him, but he's been unwilling to get out there. I think the $25 million actually is going to end up having an effect.

We saw in the past, Miramil Cauncy (ph), who was being sheltered inside Afghanistan by members of his tribe, they ultimately gave him up for about a million dollars. He was the individual who murdered CIA employees outside the entrance of the headquarters here in northern Virginia.

When you're talking $25 million, when you're talking about the collapse of the Taliban military and the ability of bin Laden to provide protection to anyone, I think self-preservation is going to take over. That is, that's human nature. And at that point, Mr. Bin Laden does not have a lot of resources to fall back on.

So it's going to end up either he's going to be betrayed or he's going to get caught through a military sweep. But I don't think we're going to see this guy out on the front lines. He's a coward.

ZAHN: And Larry, what do you think is his strategy for dealing with the U.S. marines?

JOHNSON: Well, the reason we have marines in there is because they're the best combined forces the United States has. That means that they know how to use the cordon of air and land and if they're near the water with the sea, with naval fire. What they're going to do is provide a fortified base from which you can operate. They know how to defend and hold territory. And from there you can set up and provide special operators a way to carry out their operations in a more effective manner, frankly.

ZAHN: Larry Johnson, Hamid Mir, great to have both of you with us this morning. Appreciate your insights.

JOHNSON: Thanks, Paula.

ZAHN: My pleasure.

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