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CNN Newsroom

Aired December 12, 2001 - 04:32   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.
(PREEMPTED BY CNN INTERNATIONAL NEWS)

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): ...the charges trace in writing what CNN has reported, tens of thousands of dollars funneled from the Middle East to the hijackers, and, in the days before the hijacking, leftover money was wired back to Dubai.

The man who may have been behind Moussaoui, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, thought to have been the missing 20th hijacker, had he not failed four times to enter the U.S. for flight training. Soon after, Moussaoui went to Pakistan, came back, and began flight training in Oklahoma.

In an apparent attempt to avoid raising eyebrows by evading U.S. laws, Moussaoui freely declared to U.S. Customs $35,000 in cash when he landed in Chicago last February. But he soon washed out of flight school in Oklahoma.

BRENDA KEENE, AIRMAN FLIGHT SCHOOL: He had never attained even the solo certificate at this point. So that would leave me to believe that he was not a very good pilot.

CANDIOTTI: In early August, the indictment says, Ramzi bin al- Shibh wired $14,000 to Moussaoui from Germany. Moussaoui apparently used that money to enroll in a second flight school in Minnesota. He was in training only three days before that flight school became suspicious.

He was picked up on immigration charges. But the FBI said Moussaoui did not cooperate, and agents had no clue about his plans. Sources say it wasn't until after September 11 that crop dusting materials and flight training tapes found in his possession made things click.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANNA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the days up to September 11th, it appeared that Zacarias Moussauoi was the one obvious clue an attack was imminent. Moussauoi was arrested for an immigration violation on August 17th, after a Minnesota flight school allegedly told the FBI Moussauoi wanted to fly a jumbo jet, when he could barely handle a private plane. But despite published reports, the school says he never asked to learn how to fly straight, while ignoring landings and takeoffs. But it is true that French anti-terror authorities already had a file on Moussauoi, and gave what little information they had to the FBI.

Moussauoi's file was opened in 1994, when French authorities believed they had the name and location of a paymaster for suspected Algerian terrorists. The single name they had: Zacarias. The place: London. A French anti-terrorist judge decided to interview Zacarias Moussauoi.

WAYNE BODKIN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: In 1994, he went to London and asked to seek and to speak to Zacarias Moussauoi. He wanted to interview him. Not only that, he wanted to carry out a search in Zacarias Moussauoi's apartment in Strotum.

MURIEL: The French judge was told he didn't have enough evidence under British law to interview Moussauoi to see if he was the Zacarias they wanted.

Before then, there was little in the life of Moussauoi to raise suspicion. He was born in southwest France in 1968 to a Moroccan family. His name came from the Old Testament. the family moved to this gated house in Nakdbon (ph) in 1981. But the family drifted apart, and Zacarias and his brother, Absumad (ph) moved out in 1991.

Zacarias headed north to Montpelier to study business, but in 1993, for some reason, he left University and went to London.

BODKIN: According to his brother, he just went to London on the spur of the moment. It was just one of those things, you know, no contacts, nowhere to go, no address. He just went.

MURIEL: But he was eventually befriended by the local mosque in Brixton and got help from a local Muslim leader with a college thesis, which lead to a master's degree in international business from London's South Bank University.

(on camera): But throughout the late '90s, as Moussauoi drifted between London and elsewhere, friends here at the Brixton mosque and in France say, they saw a real change in him. Moussauoi started to dress in traditional Pakistani clothes, he grew a beard, and he started to espouse his own brand of militant Islam to others.

(voice-over): Moussauoi started to attend London's more radical mosques to hear clerics like Abu Katarda (ph) speak. Eventually, he was asked to leave the moderate Brixton mosque because of his talks about a jihad, or holy war, against the West.

During his seven years in London, Moussauoi's family and French investigators say he traveled to Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan.

France's top anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Luis Brugier has opened a formal investigation into activities of Moussauoi. He won't discuss what he learned about Moussauoi, and French authorities routinely detain those with any hint of terrorist links.

(on camera): Zacarias Moussauoi was one of thousands of names in French investigators' files throughout the 1990s. But contrary to numerous media reports, French sources tell CNN, Moussauoi was not actively under investigation here in Paris, nor in London. There simply was no evidence of terror links beyond his trip to Afghanistan.

(voice-over): French investigators again became interested in Moussauoi in April of 2000. That's when a close childhood friend of the Moussauoi brothers, Zabuwe Zefo (ph), was killed while fighting in Chechnya. This martyr's web site tells his story, under his Islamic name, Masood Al-Benin (ph).

After Al-Benin died, the DST, the French counter-intelligence service, knocked on the door of Moussauoi's mother.

AICHA MOUSSAOUI, MOTHER (through translator): They asked me whether I knew where Zacarias was. I said that I didn't know. They said that he had a friend that had died, and they wanted to know if he had been with him. I said, no, I don't know, and then they left.

MURIEL: By the time his best friend was dead, it's believed that Moussauoi was already back in London. By now, he had shaved his beard and resumed wearing Western clothing. Acquaintances in London say he talked of blending with the enemy. At times, he lived at this Brixton flat, the flat police raided the night of September 11th. He used this address when he arrived in Oklahoma in February of this year for flying lessons.

During the summer, he moved to Minnesota to attend yet another flying school. It was here Moussauoi received two wire transfers from Germany, $15,000 that German investigators believe came from the same people who helped suspected hijack leader Mohamed Atta. It's the most direct link investigators have to the September 11th attacks.

From his arrest in August, Moussauoi mother had no word from him, until this letter arrived in October, four pages written in French. Investigative reporter Wayne Bodkin has talked at length with Moussauoi's family about his life. He read the letter with his mother.

WAYNE BODKIN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: "I have not given them proof or witnesses of anything, and God, with God's help, we'll make it all look completely ridiculous, their -- their plot, which they're hatching."

MURIEL: But investigators say he had crop dusting information on his computer and may have been planning a trip to Europe that was thwarted by his arrest.

Dianna Muriel, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE) MICHAEL MCMANUS, CO-HOST: The coming weeks will prove critical to the people in Afghanistan. The Taliban have cleared out of many areas they once ruled, and though that's a big relief to many people, it marks a time of uncertainty as leaders try to figure out how to rebuild the nation.

Rebecca MacKinnon will bring us that story coming up.

Meanwhile, we go to CNN's Harris Whitbeck in the Afghan capital Kabul where groundwork is being laid for a peaceful transfer of power later this month.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The U.N. special envoy arrived in Kabul to make sure everything is ready for Afghanistan's big day, December 22, when a new interim government will be installed.

Lakhdar Brahimi says it is an opportunity the country should not miss.

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY TO AFGHANISTAN: They have a golden opportunity, perhaps never to come again of availing themselves of this goodwill. And political will to help them, and support a process that will bring peace, security to them and will provide resources for reconstruction.

WHITBECK: He also met with Northern Alliance officials about the issue of security for the new administration. A multinational security force was agreed to in the Bonn accords, the Northern Alliance defense minister was clear in saying its role will be limited.

GEN. MOHID FAHIM, CMDR. IN CHIEF N. ALLIANCE: There is no need for more than 1,000 U.N. peacekeeping soldiers. The peace of Kabul city will be maintained by Afghan security forces. U.N. peacekeeping forces should take care of the security of the meetings about entering government and Loya Jirga process.

WHITBECK: Brahimi's visit, and the impending installation of a new government, have begun changing the way Afghan people think of their leaders.

Every morning Abdul sets up shop, in a park across the street from the defense ministry, in Kabul, pen and paper ready. Dozens of clients come to see him. They pay him to write petition letters to be presented to government authorities. A modern-day scribe, Abdul contributes in his own way to what he says is a new relationship between the power and the people in Afghanistan.

"People feel freer to approach the leaders now," he says, "they feel they can communicate their needs, but the problem is there are so many people they can't all reach the leaders when they want to." On this day Abdul is helping former military officers fill out forms they hope will allow them to get back jobs taken from them during the Taliban regime. "I'm not the only one," says Hamidulah (ph), "everybody is sure the new government will fulfill all our hopes and expectations." Prospects for peace now seem as close at hand as ever.

(on camera): The promised political changes are generating a new kind of excitement in Afghanistan. For the first time in over 20 years people here dare to dream of a stable government. But even the proponents of the new plan, recognize that stability will not be easily achieved in a land so used to war.

Harris Whitbeck CNN, Kabul, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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REBECCA MACKINNON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When the war in Afghanistan is over, once Osama bin Laden has been found, his al Qaeda network destroyed, the Taliban completely crushed, what then?

WURIA KARADAGHY, UNDP AFGHANISTAN: If you look at the streets in Kabul, it look like Berlin 1945 or maybe Tokyo 1945 even.

YASUSHI AKASHI, JAPAN CENTER FOR PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY: It is always much easier to fight a war than to rebuild a country.

MACKINNON: How to rebuild and how much it will cost is the question now being tackled by representatives of 27 Afghan non- governmental organizations. Meeting for three days in Tokyo, their goal is to hammer out a plan.

DR. SULTAN A. SALEHI: Afghanistan has been continuously and repeatedly ruined for 22 years and we need, I think, another 22 years to reconstruct it.

MACKINNON: Then there are the six million refugees still in other countries.

AZIZURAHMAN RAFIEE, ACBAR: Three landmines are waiting for each returnee.

MACKINNON: At a tea party with Japanese and Western media in a trendy part of Tokyo, they hope their cry for help will be seen and heard by much more fortunate readers and viewers.

DR. AL-UMERA, WELFARE & DEVELOPMENT ORG.: Our hospital has been shot during Soviet times, our hospital has been shot during Mujahideen times, our hospital has been shot during the Taliban times and now by the U.S. So four times it's shot so it's right now rubble. We need a revival (ph) (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We need hospitals, we need schools, we need roads, we need bridges.

KANISHKA NAWABI, AREA: You want a sustainable solution for this process, we do not want $10 billion for coming one year, we want that $10 billion for at least five years. MACKINNON (on camera): These Afghan organizations hope to prove to the world that they can rebuild their country with the right kind of help. The question is, once the war on terrorism moves elsewhere, will there still be much interest in helping Afghanistan?

Rebecca MacKinnon, CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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CHRIS CANNIZZARO, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Hi, my name is Chris Cannizzaro from Los Angeles, California. And I'd like to know how dangerous it is reporting from the frontlines in Afghanistan?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF: It's not a safe environment up at the frontlines. It's chaotic. There's no protection in terms of places to hide, necessarily. You have to wear your flack jacket, your helmet, but the fighting can be very chaotic here because neither side has trained soldiers. These are essentially just people from the village who have lived all their lives carrying automatic weapons, and they don't necessarily fire them with the most precision.

Another danger, of course, is that, God forbid, in the event that somebody is hurt, there are no medical facilities. I have never seen a Northern Alliance medic, for instance. Their field hospitals, I'm told, are quite ghastly. So if by chance you're hurt here, you're in big trouble.

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MCMANUS: During Taliban rule, simple rights many of us take for granted were taken away. Afghans couldn't listen to music or watch TV, and many could not even go to school. Women's rights all but disappeared under the harsh regime. And when the Taliban left Kabul, it seems fitting that the news was broadcast by a woman.

Patricia Sabga has the story.

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JAMILA MOJAHID: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Afghanistan, Kabul.

PATRICIA SABGA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The voice that broke five years of silence for Afghan women.

MOJAHID: Jamila Mojahid.

SABGA: Jamila Mojahid, veteran newscaster and the first person to announce the Taliban's exit from Kabul.

"The Taliban forces were half a kilometer from Kabul," she says, "even some of them were in the city center when I broadcast on the radio."

(on camera): What were the first words you broadcast? (voice-over): "I said, dear listeners and the people of my country, the Taliban with their whips have fled the city."

I was scared, and I was thinking that if the Taliban returned to Kabul, what will happen to me? And I was completely sure that if they returned, they would kill not only me but my family.

Mother of five, Jamila lives with her husband and children in a dark, cramped two-room apartment. The Soviet named Third Micro Region Complex was her prison for five years.

"It was five years of frustration," she says, "even the voices of my children got on my nerves."

But she spent those years making sure her daughter Mina would have an educated voice, sending her to a clandestine girl's school. Jamila shows us how her daughter had to hide her books from the eyes of the Taliban.

Today, all eyes are on Jamila. Her apartment is one of the most popular destinations for foreign journalists, who've made her Afghanistan's most celebrated working mom. Her youngest is still getting used to the idea. But some things haven't changed.

(on camera): Why do you wear the burka when you go out?

(voice-over): "The situation here is that we must put it on."

All the more ironic given that Jamila is Afghanistan's most visible woman. Along with two radio shows, she also anchors the nightly TV newscast face uncovered.

Another dangerous first in the waning hours of the Taliban.

"I forgot everything, and I just sacrificed for women's liberation," she says. "I will carry on my duty, and I hope to God that nothing like the Taliban ever happens again."

Patricia Sabga, CNN, Kabul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Teachers, make the most of CNN NEWSROOM with our free daily classroom guide to the program. There you'll find a rundown of each day's show so you choose just the program segment that fits your lesson plan. Plus there are discussion questions and activities and the guide highlights key people, places and news terms. Each day find hot links to other online resources and previews of upcoming desk segments.

It's all at this Web address where you can also sign up to have the guide automatically e-mailed directly to you each day. It's easy. It's free. It's your curriculum connection to the news. After all, the news never stops and neither does learning.

SHARON NORTH, CO-HOST: During times of crisis, people often turn to religion for comfort and solace. The September 11 terrorist attacks inspired many to reexamine their religious values and their spirituality.

But now the attacks are a full three months behind us, and, as CNN's Anne McDermott learned, for some that long hard look at the renewal of their faith has somehow become a passing glance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You remember where you were.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got another tower collapsed. Another tower collapsed.

MCDERMOTT: Now remember what you said. For many it was, "Oh my God!". And they went here, or here, or here to pray to God. Anita Pepper did.

ANITA PEPPER: I felt a really compelling need to suddenly go to church.

MCDERMOTT: Some churches reported attendance up 300 percent.

PEPPER: And then I told myself, I'm going to go every Sunday. This is really what I need to be doing.

MCDERMOTT: Terrorism equals religious reawakening, right? Wrong. It didn't last.

PEPPER: Unfortunately, I'm back to my routine.

MCDERMOTT: So are most people. One poll showed about 42 percent of adults in the U.S. attended religious services in November, about the same that did a year ago. And pollster George Barna found no change among home prayer and Bible reading.

GEORGE BARNA, BARNA RESEARCH GROUP: Things are back to normal. They got there very quickly.

MCDERMOTT: Which some say should come as no surprise. Americans sought solace after Pearl Harbor, after the assassination of JFK, after Columbine, but how long did it last? Some historians say it's because the character of America isn't made for reflection, it's made for forging ahead.

PROFESSOR SCOTT BARTCHY, RELIGIOUS STUDIES, UCLA: We are so deeply entrenched in consumerism, in individualism and find our meaning over there.

MCDERMOTT: But prayer, at least some say, is part of the national character. Just ask Lisa Jefferson, who took that call from Todd Beamer aboard the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.

LISA JEFFERSON, GTE AIRFONE: He was a very strong, calm man. He was very calm while he was talking to me, so I had to give him that in return.

MCDERMOTT: And then together they said the Lord's Prayer.

CONGREGATION: ...as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation...

MCDERMOTT: This mass was celebrated by Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles who says forget the polls, forget church attendance, he's seen spiritual renewal in little everyday exchanges, as people reach out and look out for one another.

CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY, LOS ANGELES: I've never seen people introduce themselves on a plane, talk to each other in my life. I've been on planes where -- for years and years and years, I've never seen anything quite like it.

MCDERMOTT: But what are such gestures in the face of monstrous evil? Maybe nothing at all, maybe everything.

Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NORTH: We leave you with the sights and sounds from some of the ceremonies held yesterday around the world, ceremonies honoring the September 11 victims. They began at 8:46 a.m. Eastern time, the exact moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

I'm Sharon North.

MCMANUS: And I'm Michael McManus. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When we fight terror, we fight tyranny, and so we remember.

(MUSIC, "STAR SPANGLED BANNER")

BUSH: Every one of the innocents who died on September the 11th was the most important person on earth to somebody. Every death extinguished a world. We remember the courage of the rescue workers and the outpouring of friendship and sympathy from nations around the world.

(CHILDREN SINGING)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

ARIEL SHARON, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: We salute the President Bush and the American people for their courageous leadership, wisdom and determination. God bless America.

YASSER ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY PRESIDENT (through translator): This -- this kind of terror attacks have been strongly condemned by our people, by our Palestinian people and by the peoples of the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three months ago today, it seems much, much longer, then almost to the minute, the world changed.

(MUSIC)

RT. HON. IAN DUNCAN SMITH MP: We must never forget the pain and the suffering caused to thousands of families in the United States and throughout the world.

(MUSIC, "STAR SPANGLED BANNER")

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: And I think it's as well, now three months on, just to remember those events for a moment, how terrible they were. What a ghastly and evil tragedy it was for people in the United States of America, but how that reverberated right round the world.

BUSH: The course we follow is a matter of profound consequence to many nations. If America waivers, the world will lose heart. If America leads, the world will show its courage. America will never waiver. America will lead the world to peace.

(APPLAUSE)

(MUSIC, "STAR SPANGLED BANNER")

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (singing): God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from above, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the ocean, white with foam. God bless America, my home sweet home. God...

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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