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CNN Live At Daybreak

Afghan Police Stop Possible Terror Attack

Aired September 18, 2002 - 05:31   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.


CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Moving now to the war on terror, it has not let up. Just over the weekend, this past weekend, Afghan police stopped a possible terror attack when they intercepted a tanker that was carrying 12,000 gallons of aviation fuel and nine sticks of dynamite.
Mike Chinoy joining us now live from Kabul with the latest on this -- Mike, what is the latest?

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Catherine.

Well, what happened was a couple of days ago the international security force here got some intelligence about a tanker that appeared to be headed towards the Bagram Air Base a little bit outside Kabul. That tanker, as you said, carrying about 12,000 gallons of fuel, nine sticks of dynamite and detonators. The security force here tipped off the Afghan police, who set up roadblocks and located the tanker, arresting several people.

The driver was freed after being questioned. He apparently had no idea that he was driving what was intended to be a huge bomb. Apparently the plan was to take that tanker and get it as close to the U.S. air base at Bagram outside the capital. That's the main headquarters for the U.S. forces operating here in Afghanistan.

So a narrow escape. It's the latest in a series of terror scares here around the capital, Kabul. Don't forget, it was just a couple of weeks ago that a huge car bomb, actually, two car bombs exploded not far from where I'm standing, killing about 30 people. And this whole episode underscoring the fact that it's still very dangerous out here, particularly for the U.S. troops fighting the war on terror -- Catherine.

CALLAWAY: All right, thank you, Mike. I know you'll be back with us in just a minute.

We are going to continue to follow the story out of Afghanistan, of course, all of the international stories throughout the day here on CNN.

And to get to that, our international assignment editor, Paul Ferguson, with us now -- hi, Paul.

PAUL FERGUSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENT EDITOR: Hi, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: A big, a big story out of Afghanistan this morning. FERGUSON: That's right. Well, Mike very kindly agreed to stick around a bit and show us what he was doing. Right now you just saw a beautiful picture of him.

CALLAWAY: Yes?

FERGUSON: Sometimes when you see Mike out of Afghanistan it's not quite so beautiful. It looks like you're looking through the, through a rainy windshield. And that's because it's on a video phone.

CALLAWAY: Yes, they hear us say that a lot when we're talking to someone that they're joining us by video phone. A lot of confusion over the difference between that and the satellite.

FERGUSON: Well, let me show you what a video phone looks like. You'll see now a picture of Mike on a video phone. Mike, can you hear us?

CHINOY: Yeas, I can hear you. Go ahead.

FERGUSON: Well, we just wanted to explain to our viewers who are seeing you now on a video phone and also on a satellite picture just what exactly is the difference. There we go, video and satellite. What is the difference? Why do we sometimes use this fuzzy picture and what's the advantage?

CHINOY: Well, viewers are used to seeing this very crisp image that's sent by a satellite dish. Now, satellite dishes are big. They are complicated. They're heavy. They're expensive and they're not that easy to transport. In contrast, the video phone is very small and portable.

And let me ask the cameraman who's got a camera hooked up to the satellite dish, Jay, to unhook his camera and I'll show you a little bit how the video phone works. The video phone consists of two small satellite phones over here and an encoder. And essentially all you have to do is hook these two up to the encoder and then hook the encoder up to the camera and the encoder will transmit the camera's signal through this very, very small device here.

And so all of these together just fit into a couple of carrying cases. You can literally hand carry it onto an airplane. It runs off batteries, so you don't need any external power source. So what that means is that you can go a, most anywhere in the world and you can set this up and operate it without any other support.

Let me give you a sense of the difference here. If you go inside the gate to our compound here in Kabul, what you see in the background, that's a satellite dish mounted on a truck. That's about as portable as a satellite dish will get. We can drive that to the scene of the action, but clearly you can't go to the top of a mountain, go into a jungle, go to an area where there are no facilities of any kind.

So we have in recent years made the satellite, the video phone a standard part of our operating kit. Almost every CNN team has a video phone and we can then take you to the most remote corners of the world, where the news is happening, and bring it to you. The quality isn't as good, but you'll be able to see the news live as it happens -- Paul.

FERGUSON: Now, Mike, we've had people in, near the Arctic Circle with, on video phone. We've had folks in deserts with the video phone. What's your personal record for most difficult, inaccessible place where you've been live on television courtesy of the video phone?

CHINOY: Last year after the American war in Afghanistan started, we went up to a very remote corner of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border well north of the Khyber Pass. This was an area where the Pakistani authorities were proposing to house thousands of Afghan refugees and it was an area that literally had nothing -- no water, no electricity. There were scorpions crawling around on the ground.

We were able to get there, set up and do live broadcasts, underscoring just how difficult and remote this piece of terrain would have been as a place to house refugees, let alone try and do live television from.

CALLAWAY: Mike, this is Catherine. I just want to ask you a question. What is the response that people give you when you arrive with the video phone? It's certainly technology that most people in these remote areas have never seen.

CHINOY: Well, you ask about the response. If you turn the camera over this way, this is a street in Kabul and you can see. This is a pretty normal response in a Third World setting. These are curious but largely friendly bystanders. In fact, most folks are pretty friendly to us here in Kabul.

The response to the video phone is perhaps less dramatic than to the satellite dish, simply because it's smaller and it's a little bit less conspicuous. But still it's more a foreign TV crew with lots of cables, cameras. If you turn the camera this way you can see what our regular camera, Scott, looks like, our producer team here.

So we attract attention wherever we go, but the video phone does allow you to move around more easily and to be a little bit less conspicuous than we might otherwise be.

CALLAWAY: Yes, that's amazing. Good work out there, Mike.

Thank you.

FERGUSON: Great.

Thanks, Mike.

Yes, things have changed. You know, it wasn't that long ago where it was tons of equipment.

CALLAWAY: Right.

FERGUSON: You would have to charter airplanes and if there was no landing strip, there wasn't a live shot.

CALLAWAY: I mean we talk about how satellites have changed the world, the media and how we cover things, but I wonder what the video phone is going to do now.

FERGUSON: That's true.

CALLAWAY: Because you, indeed, can go to the most remote areas. Can one person carry that video phone?

FERGUSON: Sure. You can fit it in an overhead bin.

CALLAWAY: That's amazing.

All right, Paul, thank you very much for sharing that with us.

FERGUSON: OK, thank you.

CALLAWAY: And for Mike Chinoy for playing along with us this morning.

FERGUSON: Yes, that was interesting.

CALLAWAY: Yes, it was.

FERGUSON: That was fun. I'm glad we could show that.

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






Aired September 18, 2002 - 05:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Moving now to the war on terror, it has not let up. Just over the weekend, this past weekend, Afghan police stopped a possible terror attack when they intercepted a tanker that was carrying 12,000 gallons of aviation fuel and nine sticks of dynamite.
Mike Chinoy joining us now live from Kabul with the latest on this -- Mike, what is the latest?

MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Catherine.

Well, what happened was a couple of days ago the international security force here got some intelligence about a tanker that appeared to be headed towards the Bagram Air Base a little bit outside Kabul. That tanker, as you said, carrying about 12,000 gallons of fuel, nine sticks of dynamite and detonators. The security force here tipped off the Afghan police, who set up roadblocks and located the tanker, arresting several people.

The driver was freed after being questioned. He apparently had no idea that he was driving what was intended to be a huge bomb. Apparently the plan was to take that tanker and get it as close to the U.S. air base at Bagram outside the capital. That's the main headquarters for the U.S. forces operating here in Afghanistan.

So a narrow escape. It's the latest in a series of terror scares here around the capital, Kabul. Don't forget, it was just a couple of weeks ago that a huge car bomb, actually, two car bombs exploded not far from where I'm standing, killing about 30 people. And this whole episode underscoring the fact that it's still very dangerous out here, particularly for the U.S. troops fighting the war on terror -- Catherine.

CALLAWAY: All right, thank you, Mike. I know you'll be back with us in just a minute.

We are going to continue to follow the story out of Afghanistan, of course, all of the international stories throughout the day here on CNN.

And to get to that, our international assignment editor, Paul Ferguson, with us now -- hi, Paul.

PAUL FERGUSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENT EDITOR: Hi, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: A big, a big story out of Afghanistan this morning. FERGUSON: That's right. Well, Mike very kindly agreed to stick around a bit and show us what he was doing. Right now you just saw a beautiful picture of him.

CALLAWAY: Yes?

FERGUSON: Sometimes when you see Mike out of Afghanistan it's not quite so beautiful. It looks like you're looking through the, through a rainy windshield. And that's because it's on a video phone.

CALLAWAY: Yes, they hear us say that a lot when we're talking to someone that they're joining us by video phone. A lot of confusion over the difference between that and the satellite.

FERGUSON: Well, let me show you what a video phone looks like. You'll see now a picture of Mike on a video phone. Mike, can you hear us?

CHINOY: Yeas, I can hear you. Go ahead.

FERGUSON: Well, we just wanted to explain to our viewers who are seeing you now on a video phone and also on a satellite picture just what exactly is the difference. There we go, video and satellite. What is the difference? Why do we sometimes use this fuzzy picture and what's the advantage?

CHINOY: Well, viewers are used to seeing this very crisp image that's sent by a satellite dish. Now, satellite dishes are big. They are complicated. They're heavy. They're expensive and they're not that easy to transport. In contrast, the video phone is very small and portable.

And let me ask the cameraman who's got a camera hooked up to the satellite dish, Jay, to unhook his camera and I'll show you a little bit how the video phone works. The video phone consists of two small satellite phones over here and an encoder. And essentially all you have to do is hook these two up to the encoder and then hook the encoder up to the camera and the encoder will transmit the camera's signal through this very, very small device here.

And so all of these together just fit into a couple of carrying cases. You can literally hand carry it onto an airplane. It runs off batteries, so you don't need any external power source. So what that means is that you can go a, most anywhere in the world and you can set this up and operate it without any other support.

Let me give you a sense of the difference here. If you go inside the gate to our compound here in Kabul, what you see in the background, that's a satellite dish mounted on a truck. That's about as portable as a satellite dish will get. We can drive that to the scene of the action, but clearly you can't go to the top of a mountain, go into a jungle, go to an area where there are no facilities of any kind.

So we have in recent years made the satellite, the video phone a standard part of our operating kit. Almost every CNN team has a video phone and we can then take you to the most remote corners of the world, where the news is happening, and bring it to you. The quality isn't as good, but you'll be able to see the news live as it happens -- Paul.

FERGUSON: Now, Mike, we've had people in, near the Arctic Circle with, on video phone. We've had folks in deserts with the video phone. What's your personal record for most difficult, inaccessible place where you've been live on television courtesy of the video phone?

CHINOY: Last year after the American war in Afghanistan started, we went up to a very remote corner of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border well north of the Khyber Pass. This was an area where the Pakistani authorities were proposing to house thousands of Afghan refugees and it was an area that literally had nothing -- no water, no electricity. There were scorpions crawling around on the ground.

We were able to get there, set up and do live broadcasts, underscoring just how difficult and remote this piece of terrain would have been as a place to house refugees, let alone try and do live television from.

CALLAWAY: Mike, this is Catherine. I just want to ask you a question. What is the response that people give you when you arrive with the video phone? It's certainly technology that most people in these remote areas have never seen.

CHINOY: Well, you ask about the response. If you turn the camera over this way, this is a street in Kabul and you can see. This is a pretty normal response in a Third World setting. These are curious but largely friendly bystanders. In fact, most folks are pretty friendly to us here in Kabul.

The response to the video phone is perhaps less dramatic than to the satellite dish, simply because it's smaller and it's a little bit less conspicuous. But still it's more a foreign TV crew with lots of cables, cameras. If you turn the camera this way you can see what our regular camera, Scott, looks like, our producer team here.

So we attract attention wherever we go, but the video phone does allow you to move around more easily and to be a little bit less conspicuous than we might otherwise be.

CALLAWAY: Yes, that's amazing. Good work out there, Mike.

Thank you.

FERGUSON: Great.

Thanks, Mike.

Yes, things have changed. You know, it wasn't that long ago where it was tons of equipment.

CALLAWAY: Right.

FERGUSON: You would have to charter airplanes and if there was no landing strip, there wasn't a live shot.

CALLAWAY: I mean we talk about how satellites have changed the world, the media and how we cover things, but I wonder what the video phone is going to do now.

FERGUSON: That's true.

CALLAWAY: Because you, indeed, can go to the most remote areas. Can one person carry that video phone?

FERGUSON: Sure. You can fit it in an overhead bin.

CALLAWAY: That's amazing.

All right, Paul, thank you very much for sharing that with us.

FERGUSON: OK, thank you.

CALLAWAY: And for Mike Chinoy for playing along with us this morning.

FERGUSON: Yes, that was interesting.

CALLAWAY: Yes, it was.

FERGUSON: That was fun. I'm glad we could show that.

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