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American Morning

Tapes Have Shown True Nature of al Qaeda

Aired August 23, 2002 - 08:06   ET

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

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: For the past week in our series Terror On Tape Nic Robertson has been reporting on the contents of specific tapes from the Al Qaeda collection, chemical testing, Osama bin Laden's declaration of war, training of operatives and bomb making.
Now, Nic joins us from CNN Center for the final report in the series, a look at what all these tapes mean and what they say about al Qaeda, its global reach and its leader -- good morning, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Tell us a little bit more about what you have learned about al Qaeda's global reach. What's new?

ROBERTSON: What we have seen across all these videotapes, not only tapes on the training, the bomb making, these types of things, but tapes from other jihadi organizations around the world from Somalia, from Eritrea, from Burma, from Uzbekistan, from Chechnya, from Bosnia -- and what the experts are telling us when they look at this is this shows to them the different jihadi organizations that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have aligned themselves with, not only for taking in information, from learning from them, from having connections, for example, perhaps fighters coming from there to train with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but they believe this shows just how far out al Qaeda can reach, as well.

Its network not just al Qaeda, where they were inside Afghanistan, but the fact that they are aligned with terror groups around the world, that they can disseminate their information to these groups. And this essentially making al Qaeda an organization of organizations that spans the globe.

ZAHN: And what, if anything, do these tapes indicate about where he wants to go from here if he's still alive, or where the organization will go without him if he's not?

ROBERTSON: Certainly what these tapes show and what we've already seen about Osama bin Laden, the fact that he went to Afghanistan, the best place for al Qaeda are countries where governments can't reach, perhaps remote parts of the Philippines, perhaps where they're hiding right now, where they're believed to be hiding right now, in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan. It's that area between Pakistan and Afghanistan that, the northwest frontier province in Pakistan, the Pakistani government laws, rules, regulations don't carry in that area the same way they do in Pakistan.

These types of areas are perfect for al Qaeda, because it means they can hide out beyond the easy reach of governments and international law enforcement agencies. These are the sort of areas they're going to be looking at.

ZAHN: Now, there is a really interesting piece of tape where you see a key operative communicating with someone in the field. What does analysis of that tell us?

ROBERTSON: Well, number one, we've shown some of this material to coalition intelligence sources and when they looked at it, they told us that they believed this particular room was a key communications room for al Qaeda, that only a tiny handful of people were allowed to use. What we see here and what we hear on the tape is somebody using a two way radio. And he's talking to somebody else. We don't know where they are. Are they in Afghanistan, are they further away? We don't know.

But what he's telling them is go look at your computer, we've sent you some information. The information, however, as we hear, also, from this two way radio operator, he gives him a number of codes, about five or six different six number codes. And we know that al Qaeda is using very, very sophisticated encryption on their e-mails to essentially hide what they're doing.

ZAHN: I guess that shouldn't come as any surprise that they'd want to encrypt this stuff.

ROBERTSON: No.

ZAHN: One of the weirder things that you discover through our own Peter Bergen, who is a terrorism expert who actually met Osama bin Laden and interviewed him a couple of years ago, was that unbeknownst to him, Osama bin Laden had his own cameras trained on him.

ROBERTSON: One of the strange things about Osama bin Laden that we've seen here, videotapes, his own videotapes of interviews he's done with other journalists, with Peter Bergen and his CNN interview, with an ABC interview. We see the whole thing. The ABC cameraman changing tape, talking with the correspondent. Osama bin Laden in the corner, Osama bin Laden's camera pans around the room.

So clearly Osama bin Laden here recording his important events in his own eyes. Also, the tapes we saw on Monday, Tuesday, as well, the essentially al Qaeda's coming out, the moments he probably perceives as being important to him, that show him in a good light, that put him on the map, if you will.

We talked to people, also, I have talked to people over the years in Afghanistan, some of them who knew Osama bin Laden when he came to Afghanistan in the 1980s. Some of them describe him as being quite a quiet character, but others talk about him as even from the beginning when he first came to Afghanistan to help the mujahideen fighters there defeat the Soviet Army, he at that time, they say, even then was courting the cameras. And this is a trend we see played out here.

Osama bin Laden likes to be on camera. He likes to be recorded. He likes to be seen in this leading role. ZAHN: Well, it would also suggest that he is a supreme egomaniac.

ROBERTSON: Certainly.

ZAHN: All right, Nic.

Thank you.

I know you have a special on this weekend at 10:00 p.m. We will all be glued to that as a bunch of counter-terrorism experts meet with Nic and Wolf Blitzer and some of our other in-house consultants to talk about this.

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