Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Retired FBI Officer Discusses Pipe Bombings

Aired May 08, 2002 - 10:22   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: The former FBI profiler that we mentioned earlier, Clint Van Zandt is a retired FBI man with a long experience in profiling and criminal psychology. In fact, he led the team that identified Theodore Kaczynski as the Unabomber. Well, he now works in the private sector as the president of Van Zandt & Associates, and he joins us this morning from our Washington bureau -- good morning -- good to see you again.

CLINT VAN ZANDT, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Hi, Leon. Thanks for having me.

HARRIS: All right, now. Let's see, first, I am not play stump the chump here, but now that you are the profiler now.

VAN ZANDT: Yes.

HARRIS: You have been talking about your ideas about what you thought this man was going to be like. How close did you come to it?

VAN ZANDT: Well, we were close on a lot of things, and we weren't on others. One of the areas that I equivocated on was age, because I saw terminology that he used in his letter that suggested to me perhaps somebody older. The phrase was, "more attention getters," which I thought would be an older person. But one of the members on my team, as we worked on this Monday night, who is a former college professor, he said, you know, that sounds like, not that I know him, but it sounds like one of my former students. He said I think it's much longer.

HARRIS: All right, Clint, we want to break off for just a quick second.

(INTERRUPTED BY BREAKING NEWS)

HARRIS: And we'll be stepping away from President Bush's remark right now. As we said, he is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this morning. He is spending some time talking about education, as well as drumming up some more patriotism and support behind his plan for conducting the war against terrorism. Now, we thought we might hear other interesting remarks as well perhaps, because is he in Wisconsin. We might get some other words that might be tied to this mailbox pipe bomb scheme that we have been following for the last couple of days.

Let's go back to Clint Van Zandt, who is standing by in Washington. OK, we were talking before we stepped way to go the president about your comparisons of the writing, your analysis of the writing styles. Have you had a chance this morning at all to see that -- quote/unquote -- "manifesto" that he sent to the newspaper there, "The Badger Herald," on this college campus?

VAN ZANDT: No. It's my understanding, Leon, that, you know, at least the first page was the same, and I have seen quotes from it. So it is consistent with what he had written before, which, you know, I mean, for profilers, you give us a written document, that's a wealth of information. We thought the guy would be single. We didn't think would he have finished college. We thought he would be from a small town. We thought would he have knowledge of the Midwest. We thought he would have few significant others, perhaps past his family, maybe a girlfriend.

So, you know, a lot of things were consistent with what we looked at. The challenge seems to be, Leon, is what took this supposed average college student, and you know, what propelled him to take the action he did? You know, what happened so he put thought into action? And, you know, I can give you one quick analogy.

HARRIS: All right.

VAN ZANDT: A friend of mine had a 21-year-old daughter. She thought she had been in contact with a communicable disease. She had gone to the school health service. Friday night, they were supposed to give her the results. She called up and they said, young lady, you be in here Monday, and we will tell you. We have to talk to you. Over that weekend, Leon, she killed herself. And on that Monday morning, the parents found out what the health service was going to say was that you don't have any disease, but we want you to be careful in the future.

What that suggests to all of us is how tenuous young people are. Sometimes they think they live forever, and sometimes they think there is no tomorrow. And in this guy's case, we are going to have the find the event that happened in the last month-and-a-half that made him think perhaps there was no tomorrow for him.

HARRIS: You think it was a single event? Because I have listened or at least I have read some of the comments that he left in that letter that he sent to the newspaper. And I have to tell you, it sounds like the kind of conversation that I had with friends of mine back when we were in college, back in that period where people said that at some point in a young man's life, he is socialist or whatever. You can go through these different changes...

VAN ZANDT: Yes.

HARRIS: ... your view of the world and everything.

VAN ZANDT: Yes.

HARRIS: And we talked about that sort of stuff openly all the time. And it sounds almost like the same exact conversations. VAN ZANDT: Right. If you looked in that letter he wrote, Leon, and he uses the term "death and die" 10 different times in about half a dozen paragraphs. I mean, that was tremendously significant. But the interesting thing was that he was suggesting almost like he had found a way to conquer the fear of death, which the government uses to keep us in line. Therefore, he was immune, but in his own way, he was using that same fear against us as Americans to make his statement.

And when you read that, Leon, you know, that's the type of paper if you were a college professor, you'd put a D on it and send it back and say, I need the conclusion. He didn't give us the rest of the story that's in his mind.

HARRIS: That's a great point, because the next thing that jumps out obviously is what was he getting at? What is it that he wants?

VAN ZANDT: Yes. And you know, that communication was just like an extortion letter saying, OK, you have to do this, this and this, otherwise I will do these bad things. And to stop me, you have to do the following. Leon, he never told us what the following was. He never gave us the rest of the story. So now, did he have that actually in his mind, or is this someone, something happened to him?

I mean, he was halfway through his junior year of college. He quits attending school a month before final exams, and then takes these thoughts that he had and puts them into action. Something happened to this guy within the last month, five or six weeks, you know, with a girlfriend, with drugs, with school. Some event happened, where he had to say to himself, I have to make a statement so bad that I'm ready and willing to give up my life for it.

HARRIS: Yes. It's just one of the many questions left unanswered here. I still want to know why mailboxes? You know, and why all over the Midwest? But...

VAN ZANDT: Well, he is a little combination of Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh and the anthrax letter sender, and he knows from media experience that that's a forum that's going to afford you, you know, contact with the media, that if you do something with the mail, Kaczynski did, obviously the anthrax letter sender did. I don't think he was trying to kill Mr. and Mrs. America. I think he was trying to get our attention like there is a conspiracy moving across the country, and therefore, a forum to deliver his message. But his message was so disorganized, we don't really understand what he is telling us.

HARRIS: Well, he may not have tried to -- he may not have set out kill Mr. and Mrs. America, but he almost did, and he is going to pay for it.

VAN ZANDT: He almost did.

HARRIS: It looks like he is going to pay for that. Clint Van Zandt, thank you very much.

VAN ZANDT: Thanks, Leon. HARRIS: I sure do appreciate the conversation as always -- take care.

VAN ZANDT: OK.

HARRIS: We'll talk to you later.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com