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American Morning
Pakistani Officials Arrest Bin Laden Associates
Aired April 02, 2002 - 08:26 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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pakistani officials say this morning they have now arrested six more men with suspected ties to Osama bin Laden. A raid last week is now believed to have netted one of the biggest fish in the entire al Qaeda network since the start of the war on terror.
Abu Zubaydah, who is now in U.S. custody, is believed to have been al Qaeda's chief of operations and ranked either third or fourth in the hierarchy, the organizational chart of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
CNN national security correspondent David Ensor joins us now with his weekly intelligence briefing from Washington -- David, good to see you.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you, Jack. This is potentially...
CAFFERTY: Yesterday...
ENSOR: Sorry, go ahead.
CAFFERTY: No, go ahead.
ENSOR: Well, I was just going to say this arrest...
CAFFERTY: But yesterday was -- let me just get this out and then we'll go ahead and start. But yesterday they kept couching this, saying we think it's him, we think it's him, we think it's him. Is it him?
ENSOR: It's him.
CAFFERTY: OK.
ENSOR: And not only that, not only that, the man is talking. The man is confirming his identity to U.S. officials. He was fairly badly injured during the arrest, Jack, shot in the groin, the leg, the stomach. But he is recovering. He is talking, at least to the extent of agreeing that he is, indeed, Abu Zubaydah, the operations chief of al Qaeda. This is a huge coup for U.S. intelligence and there's a race against time now to get what information they can out of him that might save lives. There is the potential for additional terrorism, perhaps even soon. This man knows the names, the faces and even perhaps some of the locations of key al Qaeda operatives who might be plotting additional terrorism. So they want to get that information out of him as quickly as they can.
CAFFERTY: How did they get him and what role did American intelligence officials, FBI, CIA or whoever may be on the ground in Pakistan, what role did they play in getting this guy?
ENSOR: The CIA has been planning this coup, I think we can call it, for quite some time. And they have been trying to build information about suspected al Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan. They raided a series of different houses, dozens, I am told, over the last few days. There may have been additional, as you mentioned, again today. They're trying to pull in anybody they think might have an al Qaeda connection and they seem to have gotten a very big fish, indeed.
CAFFERTY: Any sense, David, of how suddenly we're seeming to meet some success that eluded us in the early days of trying to prosecute this war? All of a sudden we're rounding up high ranking al Qaeda officials in Pakistan, but they seem to get away from us in the early going and remain at large for a good long while. Suddenly now we're getting some dividends out of this effort.
ENSOR: Well, U.S. officials have always said this would take time. It is taking time. Needless to say, they haven't got Zawahri. They haven't got bin Laden yet. But they're on the trails of those two, as well.
This particular breakthrough, if the man will talk beyond his name, rank and serial number, could lead to more arrests. So it's a really important development for the safety of Americans around the world.
CAFFERTY: What was his job within bin Laden's organization? What was his responsibility?
ENSOR: He was the guy to whom potential recruits would come and say I volunteer to die for the jihad. He would decide yes, you may do it, no, I don't trust you. He would decide where to send them, what facilities they would have for their missions. So he is a key sort of center of the spokes in the wheel, so to speak. He knows where a lot of people are, according to U.S. intelligence. They are hoping that he will tell them a great deal. Of course, he's got to start talking and beyond his name, they're not confirming yet whether he's giving them much information.
CAFFERTY: Well, and it's probably unlikely that they would share that with the general public over the news media even if he was, at least at this point, right?
ENSOR: Well, that's right. They want to use the information before they put it out.
CAFFERTY: Sure. David, good to see you, as always. Thank you.
ENSOR: A pleasure.
CAFFERTY: David Ensor, our national security correspondent, from Washington.
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