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CNN Live At Daybreak

Interview with Magnus Ranstorp

Aired August 23, 2002 - 06:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Terrorism experts say the collection of al Qaeda tapes obtained by CNN shows the group's global reach. We've been reviewing over 60 tapes for you this week, as part of our series, "Terror on Tape."
The al Qaeda video library has a wide cross-section of material, showing separate video recordings of militants training and in combat in countries throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The video also gives us a sense at al Qaeda's media savvy.

There are tapes showing al Qaeda's own camera taping network TV interviews with Osama bin Laden in the late '90s.

The most recent tapes in the library are al Qaeda recordings of news coverage of the September 11 attacks from the international TV networks, BBC, Al-Jazeera and CNN.

We have reaction to the terror tapes now from London. Magnus Ranstorp is from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

MAGNUS RANSTORP, TERRORISM EXPERT: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: You've reviewed all 64 tapes. What has been your general impression?

RANSTORP: I think my general impression has been that al Qaeda is a seriously formidable organization that really has left no stone unturned in terms of their individual capability of launching guerrilla and terrorist missions.

I think it has been quite chilling to watch the dog tape. Of course, that was probably one of the most disturbing facets that they are not only thinking about chemical agents, but they are actually experimenting and possibly deploying them in the future.

COSTELLO: Is that the most...

RANSTORP: So it's the entire repertoire that...

COSTELLO: Is that the most significant thing we've seen so far?

RANSTORP: Well, I think it visually confirms what we knew in the sense that in the sort of 5,000 page manual, the "Encyclopedia of Jihad," the 11th volume talked about chemical and biological agents. But we had no visual confirmation, and this is the first time that we have seen that they have gone beyond just thinking about this issue.

COSTELLO: Is there anything else in the tapes that we've learned about al Qaeda that we didn't know before?

RANSTORP: Well, I think that there are new faces that have popped up in the background. You know, not the type of people like Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Mohammad Atef, but also, you know, lesser-known faces. And I think in totality, I think it will be a valuable intelligence tool in the sense that law enforcement if the review the tapes could see that there are still people out there, and they can at least have some sense of who they are, because we don't have a membership list of al Qaeda. It's incredibly difficult to find, you know, where these members are.

COSTELLO: Definitely. Something that I just can't get is why al Qaeda taped all of this stuff.

RANSTORP: Well, there are a number of different reasons. I mean, all of these tapes in totality represents -- you know, they were used for instructional purposes, operational purposes, but they were also used for recruitment. And it's a mixture, really, of both recruitment and instructional tapes, which really means that they don't need Afghanistan anymore. They can miniaturize the operational space, which they use, to think and to plan and to plot terrorist missions.

They are also seemingly in some sense a personal vanity on the behalf of bin Laden in the sense that whoever's library this was, certainly collected and was interested in knowing, really, what the rest of the world was saying. And bin Laden has been the master choreographer of his message and projecting himself and really sort of launching al Qaeda as a -- not only as an organization, but as a movement, where other members can get inspiration from him.

COSTELLO: What do you think he planned to do with these tapes, if anything?

RANSTORP: Well, I think, you know, some of these tapes were instructional, which makes it very difficult to counter al Qaeda beyond, you know, Afghanistan. But also, I think, some of them were not released on purpose, certainly they would have been closely guarded, closely checked. But some were just recruitment videos, and we've seen some of those before.

COSTELLO: In seeing the tapes, are you more concerned with al Qaeda now then you were before?

RANSTORP: I think without doubt, I think we have underestimated the lengths to which they have gone in terms of thinking about training and how they impart that advice. They are a very serious organization with a global reach. They are completely unpredictable.

From the tapes, we can gauge the type of operations they may launch in the future. But overall, you know, it leaves us -- or it leaves me, at least, with even more grave concerns about the capability of the organization.

COSTELLO: Yes. Thank you very much for adding your insight to the tapes that we've managed to acquire here at CNN. I thank you for joining us live this morning.

RANSTORP: Pleasure.

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