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American Morning

Moussaoui To Be Arraigned; Marines Search Compound

Aired January 02, 2002 - 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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged so far in connection with the September 11th terrorist attacks, is due in court this hour, and CNN's Skip Loescher joins us from the U.S. federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Good to see you, Skip.

SKIP LOESCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you, Leon. Zacarias Moussaoui is facing arraignment on charges stemming from the September 11th attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and here in Northern Virginia.

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LOESCHER (voice-over): Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person indicted thus far in connection with the September 11th attacks. Moussaoui arrived at the U.S. district courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia nearly three and a half hours before his scheduled arraignment. Security is tight at the courthouse, which is just a few miles from the Pentagon.

Moussaoui is charged with six counts of conspiracy. Among them, to use a hijacked plane as a weapon of mass destruction. Moussaoui was not on any of the four hijacked planes, but the government contends he engaged in the same preparation for murder that the 19 other hijackers did. Like the others, he attended U.S. flight schools.

Moussaoui could face the death penalty if convicted. Last week his mother flew to the U.S. from France, which does not have the death penalty.

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I will fight, nonetheless, with all of my strength against the death penalty for him.

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LOESCHER: U.S. officials are now investigating to see if Moussaoui trained in the same al Qaeda camp as the alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid.

In Afghanistan, the search for Taliban leader Mullah Omar and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden continues in Bagram, with U.S. Special Forces providing assistance for anti-Taliban troops. As yet, their hideouts have not been found. Tuesday, U.S. Marines probed a large walled complex not far from their Kandahar base. They met with no resistance.

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Moussaoui's trial is expected now to begin in March at the earliest. We're live in Alexandria, Virginia. I'm Skip Loescher -- Leon, back to you.

HARRIS: Thanks much, Skip. We'll see you soon. Happy New Year to you. Let's get some more now on that Marine search for members of al Qaeda. CNN's Bill Hemmer is standing by. He's on the ground in Kandahar. He joins us now live -- Bill.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Leon. Good evening again from Kandahar. First, want to touch on the latest on the detainee matter here, because really on a daily basis, we start to put together more and more pieces to that particular puzzle. Although this area is kept well away from journalists here, working in the area, very secure area, we cannot go inside of it, but we're getting a bit more information.

Right now, 200 on the grounds here, 11 more brought in last night, but we are told that some of the detainees held in Kandahar here were educated at U.S. universities and colleges. We're also told and given the understanding that at least one detainee was actually born in the U.S. One born in the state of Louisiana. However, we are also cautioned that this particular detainee apparently left the U.S. at a rather young age, and possibly went to Saudi Arabia. Today, he is described as a man in 20's, and really for the most part the 200 detainees, the majority, we are told, the majority here in their early 20's.

Somewhat young men here in Kandahar. And again, with regard to that man who was born in Louisiana, they say this is not another case of John Walker, and they stress and repeat that.

Of the 11 brought in last night, six were brought by stretcher, indicating more combat wounds possibly in Northern Afghanistan. The latest group came from Northern Afghanistan, the region of Mazar-e Sharif where many have been holed up for some time.

With that as a backdrop, let's talk more about that Marine operation now. Again, it was taking place overnight last night, in fact earlier this morning, around 4:30 local time, we saw several hundred Marines roll back onto the base in their Humvees they were driving, the LAVs, the light-armored vehicles.

The target of this operation was in Helmand province, a large compound, we're told, at least 14 different buildings searched by the Marines. They are looking for intelligence on al Qaeda and possibly Taliban members. We're told they seized some computer disks and brought them back here now to sift and sort through that information. In fact, the Marines and major Chris Hughes (ph) here, the PAO (ph) working in Kandahar, talked about the operation a short time ago with us here.

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MAJOR CHRIS HUGHES, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Marines and sailors have combined Joint Task Force 58, conducting a sweeping operation northwest of Kandahar in a suspected al Qaeda outpost early yesterday morning. The coalition effort, coordinated with local anti-Taliban forces, was carried out without incident, and yielded several small arms and some documentation. The intelligence or operational value of these documents is yet to be determined pending their evaluation.

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HEMMER: You heard Major Hughes say their operation was carried with no major incident. We're told no hostile fire. No exchange of combat involving U.S. Marines there. In fact, the Marines came back and said it went well, but they also stress it was rather uneventful for that 30 hour mission carried out.

The Marines also stressed they could be on deck for further operations, nothing confirmed right now. Nothing positive, and they've carried about a dozen over the past month here in Southern Afghanistan.

Also Leon, want to talk more about, really, what's happening on the other side of the world. It is quite amazing for us to be here in Kandahar, and have so many young men come up to us and ask us if we know the latest college football bowl scores, and also who is bound for the NFL play-offs. Earlier today, we logged on to CNNSI.com, and got (AUDIO GAP) a whole number of Marines here, based in Kandahar.

It's about their only source of information (AUDIO GAP) who have Internet access, but it is quite limited. So, the scores went out. The match-ups went out, too, and the Marines now have their information. With that, back to you -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thanks Bill, that's a good one. If there are any ACC or PAC-10 fans over there, they are in good shape today. The Big 10, and the SEC not so good.

All right. Bill Hemmer, take care. We'll talk with you later on.

HEMMER: I'll let them know.

HARRIS: You got it.

So, what's next for the U.S.-led military campaign over in Afghanistan? For some insight on that, let's turn now to our CNN Military Analyst General Wesley Clark. General, good to see you again. Happy New Year to you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Happy New Year to you, Leon.

HARRIS: All right. First of all, let's start with the Marines. Well, actually, before we get to the Marines, let's talk about the overall mission in Afghanistan right now. At this point, beginning of a new year, where do we go from here?

CLARK: It's the continuation of the mission of breaking up the al Qaeda network and running down the remnants of the Taliban, making sure they can't reform, use Afghanistan as a base, and come back and threaten us again. As the president said, we are going to stay after these guys until we get them, and it's time to keep the pressure on.

HARRIS: Well, that's a nice general broad mission statement there, but exactly does that mean?

CLARK: It means that you're collecting intelligence with all of your sensors. Airborne sensors, space sensors, local, human intelligence on the ground, you have probably got Special Forces out there working with people, so you've got eyes and ears all over the country.

When you get information that the Taliban or al Qaeda is in a location, then you have to evaluate that information and you have to respond to it. You may respond to it by putting Marines out there as we just heard. You may respond by putting Special Forces with local fighters. You may send a special operations team in by itself. You may just fly a helicopter over it and take a close look at it at night, but that's what's going on, day and night in Afghanistan.

HARRIS: Speaking of the eyes and ears and looking and peeking in on what's happening on the ground there, we understand from reports that we've gotten this morning that there was a significant loss of some high-tech gear, a Global Hawk, we understand, was lost a couple of days ago. What do you make of that?

CLARK: Well, Global Hawk is a relatively new system. I think there are only two of them that have been put together and manufactured, this is its first operational deployment. When we did this over the Balkans several years ago, we had our first Predators at that point, and new unmanned aerial vehicles do have mechanical and electronic problems, and they sometimes will go down. That what appears to have happened here.

This is part of the development process. We pushed a system in, maybe it wasn't quite ready, or maybe this is just part of introducing the system. You have got to make an operational evaluation. It may have some problems, and we'll correct them, and it will do better next time.

HARRIS: What do you make of loss of it right now from that theater? Is this going to be something that will be substantial?

CLARK: It's relatively insignificant, that particular loss.

HARRIS: Okay. Got you. Okay. Let's talk now about those Marines, and you heard Bill Hemmer say a moment ago that perhaps that they are on deck for being reassigned to some other operations. Any idea what those other operations may be, or can you even say? CLARK: Well, we don't have the information to project those operations, but as Bill said, they've done these types of operations before. One of the things we want to be careful of in Afghanistan is not falling into a pattern. As you recall in Somalia, one of the reasons the Special Forces got in trouble there is they fell under an operational pattern of doing same thing day after day, and so here, we don't want to.

So, we have got a lot of different means of responding to the intelligence information we get. One of them is the Marines. Now in this case, they went out at night. They came back at night. Some of them went by land, some of them went by helicopter. We'll probably vary the pattern the next time.

We've got to keep the enemy off balance. You have to assume in an operation like this, Leon, that someone is out there reporting on what the Marines are doing, and not just CNN, but someone from the Taliban or al Qaeda. So he has sources, and so they're watching and developing and the risk, actually, doesn't go down as we continue these operations. The risk is constant, or it may go up until we've actually broken up the Taliban and al Qaeda cells.

HARRIS: Yeah, that's a good point to end on. That's something that we all have to keep in mind, and it would appear, though, we have to keep that in mind despite the fact that they are batting 1,000 right now. Let's hope it stays that way.

CLARK: Right.

HARRIS: General Clark, thank you very much. Once again, happy New Year to you.

CLARK: Thank you, Leon.

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