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American Morning

Interview with Sen. Richard Shelby

Aired May 16, 2002 - 08:21   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: Well, right now we're going to turn to the question of the terror warning that the Bush administration apparently received. Was it enough for the administration to act on? Did the administration do enough after actually receiving a warning last summer that al Qaeda might attempt to hijack a U.S. airliner?

Joining us from Washington, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Welcome back, Senator. Good to see you.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R), ALABAMA: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Why is the administration making this admission now?

SHELBY: Well, that's a good question, Paula. We don't know. We know all along, we knew all along that the president got intelligence briefs probably on a daily basis because a lot of us on the committee got similar information. But I think that was a warning. By itself, it may not have been that important, but put together with the FBI memo of July the 10th, the situation that happened August the 17th, I believe it was, with Zacarias Moussaoui in Minneapolis, you put all that together and you've dotted a lot of things. You've closed some circles. But it didn't happen.

I think it was a lost opportunity. If you'd put it all in context, not just the briefing of the president, but the FBI is involved here and I think they could have done a better job but they didn't.

ZAHN: You have actively pursued documents which you think would help the American public better understand why the systems didn't come together. Do you have any initial analysis here of what went wrong and why that information wasn't brought together?

SHELBY: Well, basically, Paula, if you go back to the July the 10th memo from the FBI office in Phoenix to Washington, D.C., that was an involved memo that I believe that the FBI director ought to release to the American people. They've released part of it. They've acknowledged part of it. They ought to put it together.

And you tie that together, which was a big warning of the flight schools. It was, had some specifics in it that I can't comment on yet. And then you tie that onto what happened five weeks later in Minnesota, the president's warning in early August, you've got more than just a little bit of information.

Are we looking from hindsight? Yes. But if we don't look now, we'll never correct the problems that have been occurring in the past.

ZAHN: Well, it's interesting, some of the phrases you've just used, because Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesperson, came out yesterday and said, you know, in retrospect, the warning doesn't appear to be as serious as it is, given what happened on September 11. Will your committee demand that the president's briefings be turned over to you so you can figure out what did happen here?

SHELBY: Paula, we will get that information. I'm sure we will. The administration has said to us that we, they would cooperate with us in the investigation into the, regarding the events of September the 11th. I'll take them at their word right now. But we will dig into this information.

But you have to put it all in context. If you put the FBI information with the CIA warning, I think you have more than just a little bit of information.

ZAHN: Well, there was an interesting quote of an unnamed senior official in the "New York Times" today, which basically said they believe because of the heightened security warnings as a result of these briefings that President Bush got, that perhaps the hijackers even changed their tactics and turned to box cutters and plastic knives to avoid detection. What does that suggest to you?

SHELBY: Well, it just suggests that they have tactics that are evolving. They move from one method of trying to hijack a plane to the others. But the idea of hijacking a plane first came out of the French involvement. The French thwarted a hijacking of a plane where they intended to run a plane into the Eiffel Tower. We knew this. We had been briefed on this.

I believe that we've got to tie our intelligence sharing together -- the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency -- if we're going to get a handle on the problems facing us in the future.

ZAHN: I know at the top of this I asked you why this information is being released now and you said it was a good question. Do you have any speculation about the timing of this admission?

SHELBY: Well, it would be only speculation. But the fact that they've waited this long to get it out is troubling. It was troubling to us a week or two ago when the story broke regarding the FBI memo of July the 10th, a very involved memo, as to the involvement in the flight schools of the al Qaeda organization.

And you tie it all together, as I said, including the Zacarias Moussaoui situation in Minneapolis and you have some information that should have been acted upon, but it wasn't.

ZAHN: Senator, just a little background for our audience. We're going to cut to some pictures now of President Bush when he went to CIA headquarters shortly after September 11 to praise the work of George Tenet and his colleagues. You have been very outspoken. You've gone as far to say that George Tenet should step down, although you've said that it should be up to the president.

Given the fact that the head of the CIA signed off on these briefings to the president in August, is that going to cause you to more aggressively pursue Mr. Tenet's, not downfall, but perhaps push for a resignation?

SHELBY: Well, Paula, my basic inquiry is not going to go head hunting here after somebody's head, but to try to put the information together that will bring more security to the American people. And I think we have to look back at the role of the CIA, the FBI and so forth leading up to the events of September the 11th. Otherwise we will never learn a lesson.

This information is, we put it together, that's going to help us. And I hope it will help the FBI. I hope it will help the CIA to do a better job for America.

ZAHN: And Senator, in closing this morning, to be fair to the administration, even Ari Fleischer said that this briefing material never suggested specifically that commercial airliners would be used as missiles. Does that...

SHELBY: That's exactly right.

ZAHN: Right. Does that make this look any less indicting to you?

SHELBY: Well, I'm not here to indict anyone and I'm certainly not here to indict the president and anybody that had to do with the briefing. I said that we need to put all of this in the context of the times, the FBI memorandum, the FBI investigation that was basically thwarted in Minneapolis. And you put this warning in August together, you've got more than a little bit of information.

I think it should have been acted upon, but it wasn't.

ZAHN: Senator Shelby, as always, good to see you.

SHELBY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: And thanks for your patience. I know we were supposed to interview you a little before that prayer -- or, excuse me, the president's speech got under way at the prayer breakfast.

SHELBY: That's OK.

ZAHN: Again, thanks for standing by with us.

SHELBY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Good luck.

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