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American Morning

Now Infamous Taliban American Expected to Arrive on U.S. Soil

Aired January 23, 2002 - 07:05   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: Up front this morning, John Walker's homecoming in just a few hours. The now infamous Taliban American is expected to arrive on U.S. soil. It won't exactly be a warm welcome for Walker. He will be met by the long arm of the law.

Let's get the very latest now on Walker's journey home, beginning with Barbara Starr at the Pentagon -- good morning, Barbara.

Can you tell us when he might arrive here later today?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don't know the exact time, Paula, but John Walker, the so-called American Taliban, began his journey back to the United States early yesterday. He is coming back to face charges of conspiracy to kill Americans and supporting terrorist groups.

Walker was flown off the USS Bataan by a military helicopter into a remote air field in Pakistan. He then transferred to this C-130, which flew into the U.S. military air base in Kandahar late last night. He was then transferred to another plane and began his journey back to the United States.

In Kandahar, he was officially turned over to the custody of U.S. law enforcement officials. Questions are now being raised whether Walker will be treated the same as other Taliban and al Qaeda detainees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Mr. Walker has been turned over to the Department of Justice. He will go where they want him. He will not go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What kind of a cell he is put into is up to the prison that he is held in during the period that he is being processed through the criminal justice system of the United States. And any suggestion that the United States is providing preferential treatment to people depending on which country they came from, I think, would be false.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: Paula, military sources tell CNN this morning that, indeed, Walker was heavily restrained during the flight and he will be back in the States some time today. But due to heavy security precautions, no one is exactly saying when. ZAHN: Did they say why he was heavily restrained? Did he try to do something?

STARR: Well, they say that, of course, that this is standard procedure for all detainees. They say it's very similar to the procedures when any prisoners are moved here in the United States and that it's just basic security precautions and that these people, all the detainees, remain very violent and want to kill Americans.

ZAHN: The secretary or Secretary Rumsfeld made very clear that at least John Walker's immediate fate is in the hands of the Department of Justice. Does that mean the Pentagon now will have nothing to do with him once he comes home?

STARR: Well, that's exactly right. Now that he is in the hands of U.S. law enforcement he's no longer the Pentagon's problem and as far as Secretary Rumsfeld's concerned, he made it clear yesterday he's got his hands full figuring out what to do with the detainees already at Guantanamo Bay.

ZAHN: Which is something that we will be debating a little bit later on in the hour, particularly as Secretary Rumsfeld defends their treatment down in Cuba.

Barbara Starr, thank you so much for that update. Appreciate it.

STARR: You're welcome.

ZAHN: The question this hour, will John Walker walk? He was spared a possible death sentence when the attorney general opted not to charge him with treason. Should the Justice Department have aimed higher or is the government going to have a problem making any case against Walker?

Joining us now from Washington, former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne, and from New York, former assistant U.S. attorney Tom Baer. Glad to have both of you with us this morning.

CYNTHIA ALKSNE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Good morning.

ZAHN: Cynthia, I'm going to start with you this morning. What are the chances that John Walker will be convicted of anything?

ALKSNE: Oh, I think the chances are very good that he'll be convicted. First of all, we have his statement and I understand that there's a debate about the statement and whether or not it will be admitted. But there is going to be a hearing about the voluntariness of the statement and ultimately, I think, it will be admissible in court.

In addition, there is information that has to do with its e-mail traffic. In addition, there is, we've seized computers in Afghanistan that may or may not have information about him. CIA officers can testify about what they saw and heard when he was arrested.

So there is a host of other information in addition just to the statement itself.

The fun -- the interesting thing that will happen today, the first question that will happen when he's arraigned in federal court will be that the judge will ask him whether or not he has a lawyer. And we're going to learn a lot about his case this morning by the way he answers that question. You know, either he wants to have the lawyer his family has chosen for him or perhaps he doesn't. And that we're going to tell us where we're going to go with this case.

ZAHN: Tom, I think Cynthia raised some very interesting things about the admissibility of the, you know, whether the statement was voluntary to interrogators or not. But are you as convinced as Cynthia is that any of these charges will stick?

TOM BAER, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, I'm not convinced one way or the other. But it certainly seems to me that this is a man in a lot of trouble and it's going to have to take some time to find out what he's going to be convicted of and how strong these charges are.

But, you know, he's being charged with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and we're going to have to find out what the underlying crime is. You know, a conspiracy has to be to do something. It's not just a general attitude, hey, I want to be a bad guy and kill people. There has to be a specific crime. Also...

ZAHN: All right, so, Tom, it's not enough just to, for them to interview someone who trained with him at an al Qaeda training camp?

BAER: No, I don't think it is. There has to be an underlying crime and there has to be an underlying murder or series of murders. Now, we know that he is not charged, not charged with the September 11 attacks, even though the complaint says he knew about them and he continued to act for the Taliban after he knew about them.

But there isn't any charge in this complaint as to what murders, which is what they are, he specifically conspired to commit.

In addition to that, the other charges relate to material support or resources to al Qaeda and we're going to have to find out what that means. Obviously when you read the statute, it sounds like a financial statute. It sounds like what it is. It was directed to those who gave money and support. In this case, the argument that the government will have is that he gave the support of himself, of his body, so to speak, of his person. And that, again, I think will stick.

So on the whole I agree with Cynthia, the case is probably going to be successful. But we also have to examine his confession. This case is largely built on his confession and we're going to have to find out whether that was completely voluntary or not.

ZAHN: Well, how difficult, Cynthia, will that be to prove?

ALKSNE: I don't think it will be that difficult...

ZAHN: It's his word against the FBI agent's word, right?

ALKSNE: Well, no. That's sort of a Western way to think about it.

ZAHN: OK.

ALKSNE: In a way, you make the assumption that he is going to come into court and say I don't want to be found guilty of aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden and his buddies fighting the infidel. I mean maybe that's his biggest goal. He may not want to fight this confession. We make that assumption because we're Western, but that may, this is his position. This is his entire life blood and he's proud of it.

So you may see sort of an interesting twist and turn in that.

But in addition, there, he has waived his rights voluntarily, according to the FBI, by signing something that says he's waived his rights, by verbally telling an FBI agent. And it's not going to be one FBI agent. It's going to be several. And he may or may not have been in a room where others were observing. There may be a videotaped statement. Certainly, if possible, they, I'm sure they took a videotaped statement. And none of that is released yet because we don't have the information in the complaint.

An important thing for you to understand is the document that we all are reading is a charging document. It's the first document. There will be a final set of charges through the grand jury. They may be these charges. They may be other charges. Treason may come back into play when we hear the final charges after the grand jury process is complete. And there will be other evidence supporting those charges that we just don't know about now and the Department of Justice is keeping close to their vest.

ZAHN: Tom Baer, a final word. If this ultimately comes to a treason charge, we've all heard the difficulty of proving that. You need witnesses, don't you?

BAER: Yes, you do.

ZAHN: And so far there is no evidence that those witnesses exist.

BAER: But there's a lot...

ZAHN: We'll just give you about 15 seconds and then we've got to move along here.

BAER: ... a lot of effort being made to find those witnesses in Guantanamo, you may be sure.

ZAHN: And...

BAER: That's what they're looking into.

ZAHN: All right, Tom Baer, Cynthia Alksne, thank you for both of your insights this morning. Delighted to have both of you with us.

ALKSNE: Thank you very much.

BAER: Thank you. Thank you very much.

ZAHN: Jack?

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Paula.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is in Afghanistan today where he talked to reporters about the great gains in intelligence the United States has received through the interrogation of detainees.

CNN's Martin Savidge is live in Kandahar for us this morning with more -- and Martin, there's an interesting story in the "Washington Post" that one of these al Qaeda detainees may have given information to Americans that prevented a possible attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I can't verify that story specifically. I can tell you a number of things that are sort of on the periphery that would tend to support it.

First of all, it is kind of interesting the night after John Walker transits through the Kandahar Airport here that bingo, the day after Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, shows up on the scene.

Now, are the two situations related? I don't know. But it's certainly a great coincidence. Robert Mueller was in here because primarily there are a great number of FBI agents that are working here and he was here to visit with them, to talk with them and to basically pass along that he believes they're doing a fine job and that they have done some very good work.

Here's some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: Everyone of the FBI agents here couldn't be prouder to be a part of the team down here. Many of them wish they were not constrained to just interrogations, because they've been in the military before and would like to participate. But our role here is to support the military in gaining what intelligence we can from the individuals who have come through here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Mueller believes quite firmly that the work of the FBI agents here, the work of the army criminal investigation division, also the CIA and other intelligence branches around the world, have, in fact, prevented terrorism attacks since September 11. So the case you cite coming from the "Washington Post" may be a specific example of that, that being the situation in Yemen -- Jack.

CAFFERTY: Is there any indication how they're deciding which of the detainees are going to be debriefed or interrogated there in Afghanistan versus the ones that are going to be put on the airplanes and sent to Guantanamo? Any sense of how they're dividing this group of people up?

SAVIDGE: I'm sure that there is an exact plan and there is a directive by which they follow when talking to the detainees. I don't know it. Every night we tend to sit around. In fact, we interact with the army CID, the FBI. We share a campfire here in the compound. There isn't a lot to do after darkness sets in. But we aren't swapping secrets.

So I'm sure there is a plan, Jack, but they are not relaying it to us.

CAFFERTY: All right, Martin, thanks very much.

Martin Savidge in Kandahar with the latest on efforts to gather intelligence from the al Qaeda detainees.

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