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American Morning

Bin Laden Tape Raises Questions

Aired December 27, 2001 - 09:04   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: That new video of Osama bin Laden gives U.S. officials a tantalizing question: If the tape was shot recently, what does that say about whether Osama bin Laden is alive? CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen joining us this morning from Washington. Peter is out with a book on Osama bin Laden, and Peter, first of all, your first indication when you saw that tape, what was your first reaction to it?

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: My first reaction to it was a puzzling about the timing of the tape, I mean, bin Laden initially says that -- he refers to three months ago, the Trade Center attacks, that would make the tape made sometime around December 11 or so, but later in tape he refers to an attack in Eastern Afghanistan by the United States that killed a number of people, narrowly missing a senior Taliban commander.

That attack took place on November 16, and bin Laden refers to it as -- quote -- "a few days ago," which would mean that the tape then would have been made in mid to late November. So, there is some ambiguity about the timing of the tape. That's the first thing that struck me, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Peter, let's talk a little bit, if we could, about his appearance, and I know you're not a medical doctor, but you have met Osama bin Laden, and the images which we've seen from that particular interview compared to what we just saw are quite striking. Let's talk a little bit about that.

BERGEN: Well, certainly compared to, let's say -- there was a videotape of bin Laden that was getting pretty wide circulation this summer. You probably remember the picture of him shooting off a Kalashnikov rifle. He appeared to be in pretty good health at that time. We have now seen four different tapes out of bin Laden since September 11. Three of them authorized, one clearly the amateur videotape, in which he takes responsibility for the Trade Center events.

He clearly is -- his beard is whiter, he is looking a little pasty faced, he is, you can see there in these pictures that he has aged significantly in four years, and he appears to have aged fairly significantly just in the couple of months.

So, you know, he has had some health problems in the past. One of them was he had a low blood pressure, he has also had diabetes, there have been reports that he is suffering from some sort of -- either cancer or heart disease, I think those reports are probably erroneous, but he is not in best of health. For somebody who is 44, he looks a lot older, but I think running around in the Afghan mountains in the middle of winter avoiding American airstrikes would tend to make you -- get quite a lot of stress.

O'BRIEN: Peter, let's talk about some of the hidden messages that might be lying in this tape. First of all, do you discount that that is likely, secondly, what would you be looking for if, in fact, you believed there are those hidden messages?

BERGEN: Well Miles, I wouldn't be privy to what those hidden or coded messages are, but the United States administration has suggested it's possible there are on these videotapes, but it seems to me that there is a very uncoded message in all videotapes, which is attack United States. So to me, it's not so much the coded messages, it's the uncoded ones. I mean, he is continually, kind of evoking -- trying to get attacks against the west and United States in all these videotapes.

O'BRIEN: How do you suppose -- in your book, you lay out al Qaeda as -- you know, it's sort of a corporate structure, if you will, with Osama bin Laden, as the CEO. No matter what his condition right now, is he able to operate as a CEO? I assume he has very limited communication with his foot soldiers.

BERGEN: I agree, Miles. I mean, he is obviously not getting on satellite phone right now, hasn't for sometime, because he is aware people are looking for his -- quote -- "voice print," but the concern that I think would be appropriate is that if you look at the al Qaeda's operations in the past, September 11 probably took two years to plan, the USS Cole attack in Yemen took two years to plan, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa took five years to plan. The concern, I think, should be: Is there something that's been in the pipeline before September 11 which might come to fruition later, which is by now kind of an autonomous operation that doesn't need any guidance from bin Laden.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you, this might be tricky question for you, but Osama bin Laden is, of course, the money behind it, and certainly we would probably concede at least, in part, the brains. Are his funds set up in such a way that the money would live on in al Qaeda, or if he were to die, or become incapacitated in some way, would al Qaeda's financial resources dry up?

BERGEN: I think the money, Miles has always been a bit of a red herring. Let me explain. September 11 probably cost somewhere between $200 and $500,000 dollars, and the estimates suggest that it cost somewhere between a $100 billion to $300 dollars to the American economy, quite apart from the thousands of people it also killed and the way it changed everybody's lives.

So, terrorism is by its nature asymmetrical warfare, which is a fancy way of saying David versus Goliath. I mean, the whole point is to kind of leverage your resources. So, you don't need a lot of money to do terrorist attacks, even very spectacular ones like the Trade Center events. When one of bin Laden's followers came to the United States in 1999, and he had $12,000 in his pocket from al Qaeda, and that was enough for him to try and bomb Los Angeles International Airport in middle of Christmas, luckily a plan that was averted.

O'BRIEN: But nevertheless, that might be discounting somewhat, Peter, the cost of that infrastructure that existed in Afghanistan, the training camps, which presumably cost a fair amount of money to keep up and running.

BERGEN: Well Miles, you know, the Afghan doctor -- the average Afghan doctor, around $6 a month. So, a little bit of money goes a very long way, and bin Laden clearly had some money in Afghanistan, and that obviously made a difference. He gave money to the Taliban.

He was able, as you say, to finance these training camps, but I -- at the end of the day, it was his ability to recruit people who are willing to die for the cause, which is something you can't put a dollar price on, that was really his secret weapon. You can't persuade people to fly passenger jets into big buildings because of money. It's about belief, and it was bin Laden's ability to attract these people, and persuade them that somehow that all the problems that they had were caused by the United States. That was really the way -- that was his most significant thing, I think.

O'BRIEN: Peter Bergen is our CNN terrorism analyst. Thank you very much for being with us this morning, Peter. We'll check in with you a little bit later.

Now, news of the tape reached President Bush at -- on his vacation at his ranch in Texas. CNN White House Correspondent Major Garrett is in Crawford, Texas this morning for some early reaction -- Major.

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles. White House reaction is blunt and dismissive. Scott McClellan (ph), who is the press secretary traveling with reporters here and the president, telling us this is nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda that we have heard before.

Now what information, senior intelligence officials and others within the government have gleaned from the excerpts of the tape so far will be communicated to President Bush this morning at his ranch. He is due to have his standard intelligence, military, and FBI briefings this morning, has them every day, even when he is on vacation here at the Texas ranch.

Also, senior officials within the government were in touch yesterday with former U.S. ambassador to Syria Chris Ross, who has before carried the U.S. response to bin Laden taped messages. He did so on al Jazeera network after the last bin Laden tape was released on November 3. No official word from the White House as to whether or not Mr. Ross will do that again this time.

One thing the White House is debating is whether or not to go that far, to dignify the bin Laden tape with an official U.S. response, and one reason the White House is debating that point is that they believe that bin Laden has become much less of a menacing figure, much less of an important figure on the global stage because the Taliban government in Afghanistan that used to give him safe haven has been removed from that country, a new government is taking shape, and the al Qaeda network is definitely on the run in Afghanistan, as well as elsewhere.

So the White House now, Miles, debating whether or not to actually ratchet up a big official U.S. response when we know, if that's going to happen, we'll let you know.

O'BRIEN: Major Garrett in Crawford, Texas, thank you very much. Now, from Crawford we move to Tucson, Arizona this morning. That's where we find our CNN Military Analyst Major General Don Shepperd. General Shepperd, good to have you back, as always.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Miles.

O'BRIEN: Yesterday, we were talking to the Marines with Bill Hemmer in Kandahar, and you know how the Marines are, they don't like to share credit, and there they were saying, gosh, even the Air Force is helping us out. I suspect a former blue-suiter, such as yourself, was quite warmed to hear that.

SHEPPERD: I want to make sure that I -- that the Marines understand I love all Marines. Now, that Marine was doing a great job out there, great inter-service rivalry, if you will. They have always said, "hey, you guys in the Air Force have it soft, you operate from bases a hundred miles behind the lines, and all do you is come in and drop bombs for us. That's an easy life."

Well, we get shot at plenty, but I'll tell you, this guy owes me a drink for that remark, and some of the Special Ops guys called me said, "you know we were there before Marines, riding horseback in there dropping bombs," so I tell you I love that guy and all Marines. He's my kind of guy, and I want him fighting for America and they do have a tough job on the front lines, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, there are some things never change, and that is the rivalry among the various branches of the armed forces.

SHEPPERD: You bet.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the caves for a moment, Tora Bora. Yesterday, a lot of conjecture, a lot of talk about the Marines, perhaps, buttressing the effort to go on these cave to cave searches. Today we are hearing maybe not. Not such a good idea, maybe perhaps it's better to let the Afghans do this very, very difficult, dangerous, dirty work. Is that something that's really going to work? Are they motivated enough to do this cave by cave search?

SHEPPERD: Really hard to say. It's pretty clear that we would like to be in there ourselves, to search all of the caves, to see what's remaining, and see if, perhaps, even bin Laden is there, dead or alive, and gather any intelligence information, but it looks like the Eastern Alliance has said, hey, we have searched all those caves, you don't need to, and we are doing it mainly with special operations and Special Forces people now, with air power available if needed.

So, it may be that we have decided that we don't need to put a bunch of Marines there, because any time you put large numbers of forces, remember again, you have to protect them, provide security, reinforcement, and supplies, and it may be that General Franks has decided that he doesn't want to put that many in, but it's still a little bit of a early, and a developing story here, Miles.

O'BRIEN: So, let me get this straight though, we can't say categorically that those caves have been thoroughly searched and every last corner has been examined.

SHEPPERD: No, I don't think so. In fact, we are probably getting information from a lot of the prisoners about which ones of these caves are active, because, again, there's hundreds, maybe even thousands of caves in that one mountain range there, so the ability to search all of them, make definitively sure that nobody is there, there's no trap doors leading to another place we don't know about, that's going to take a long, long time, and may not be practical -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, in this case, if the Marines were, in fact, deployed in this, and we know now that this is probably less likely this morning, but nevertheless, would they be there to handle the perimeter, or they would actually going in the caves with the special operations people?

SHEPPERD: I think a little bit of both. The -- all of the services that are ground infantry-type services have ability to go in, they know how to do inner city fighting, they are trained for this, and this is like inner city fighting, underground, in the dark. They have night vision equipment, they are able to go into places like this, clear them of people, watch and clear them of booby traps and mines, so all of them are capable of doing this, but the Marines could secure perimeter, but also could be used with a large number of troops to search more places more carefully.

O'BRIEN: I suppose, given the extensive network of caves that are there, we might never really be able to definitively say, hey, we have searched every crevice.

SHEPPERD: No, I think that's true. Unfortunately, we may be left with the idea that we are pretty sure bin Laden is dead, we're pretty sure he is there, but we don't know exactly. That's kind of an imperfect ending if you will, but President Musharraf said last week that he has reason to suspect that bin Laden may be dead. Those are pretty strong words from a president who chooses his words carefully. I don't know if we've got intelligence about that, but right now it's pretty clear the United States does not know if he is dead or alive, and doesn't know where he is.

O'BRIEN: Does the tape change your thinking at all about that fact?

SHEPPERD: No, I was just listening to Peter Bergen, who has a pretty good handle on this tape. When it came out is still a question. I think it's a standard diatribe tape, but it's not clear to me when it was taped, could have been taped long before he was killed, if he was killed in the air attacks on Tora Bora.

O'BRIEN: Sort of had things sort of pre-loaded in there to, perhaps, engage in some deception then?

SHEPPERD: Yeah, indeed, and as a matter of fact, in anticipation of his death or planned death, if he was facing capture, he may have made many of these tapes to be dispersed later. So, again, it could be one of these imperfect endings that we just don't know, we're almost certain he is dead, but we don't know for sure.

O'BRIEN: Yeah, we were just talking about the president being back in Crawford, Texas no doubt reflecting upon how far U.S. forces have come, and what the next step might be. Are we on the cusp of a wider war against terrorists right now, or do you see a little cessation for a period time?

SHEPPERD: No, I think it's going on as we speak, I think there are many things going on behind the scenes, both militarily, diplomatically, and financially that none of us know about, but I think the widespread war against terrorism is well under way, and I think even militarily, we will go other places immediately, and probably are as we speak. A smaller operations perhaps, but, certainly under way. It's not going to a close by any means, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Major General Don Shepperd, retired blue- suiter who got a little thanks from the Marines yesterday, which he is reveling in this morning. We appreciate you joining us as always this morning from Tucson.

SHEPPERD: You bet.

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