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CNN Live At Daybreak

Innocent Home Video, or Tape Scouting Out 9/11 Attack Target?

Aired March 05, 2003 - 05:23   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.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Is it an innocent home video or a tape that scouts out a 9/11 attack target?
CNN's Jamie Colby reports on the controversy surrounding the footage and the man behind it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It could have been video shot by any New York tourist -- 30 minutes of the city's most famous landmarks -- the World Trade Center, inside and out, from bottom to top. This is the top of the skyscraper, the cameraman says in Arabic. There are views of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, which the camera later captures at night, zooming in on a plane flying over midtown Manhattan.

This tape from 1997 is now in the hands of families of September 11 attack victims, who believe it's no vacation video.

BILL DOYLE, FATHER OF 9/11 VICTIM: It just makes me cringe.

JOAN MOLINARO, MOTHER OF 9/11 VICTIM: When I watched him videotaping from the top of the World Trade Center down and then going right up the Hudson, the direction one of those planes took, him sitting with his arm around that statue, it was just sickening.

COLBY: Bill Doyle and Joan Molinaro each lost sons in the attack. They're among 3,000 plaintiffs suing dozens of banks, Saudi princes and Islamic charities they believe financed terrorism. They see this tape as a scouting mission.

MOLINARO: You can see he's focused in on the antenna of the north tower and in the floors in exactly where -- and he moves the camera -- it's almost exactly where the plane hit.

DOYLE: I know exactly where Joey was and where his office building was and it's almost like he stopped right there and just panned at it.

COLBY: The tape belonged to the man you see here, touring Wall Street landmarks, Ghasoub Al-Abrash Ghalyoun says, "I'll knock them all down." Ghasoub is a suspected al Qaeda operative in Spain, where law enforcement officials have charged him with belonging to a terrorist organization. "You shouldn't arrest a person to ruin his life with no evidence," Ghasoub said after his arrest last April.

Spanish police say other tapes in his home have footage of the Sears Tower in Chicago, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Disneyland.

JACK CORDRAY, ATTORNEY FOR 9/11 FAMILIES: It's obvious that from a viewing of the tapes that this was no mere tourist review of the great symbols of the United States. These were tapes that were made to site paths and approaches for the airplanes that were to be flown into the towers on 9/11.

COLBY: Ghasoub declined to be interviewed. But his attorney says his client has no connection to terrorist activity. "We strongly and categorically deny these tapes had anything to do with the attacks. Even the police have not been able to show this. They were recordings of a family on a trip."

Indeed, more than half the 90 minute tape shows the father of five on vacation and at home. Yet Spain was a meeting place for 9/11 hijackers and where more than 30 alleged Islamic terrorists have been rounded up since 9/11. Ghasoub is out on bail.

Jamie Colby, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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




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Aired March 5, 2003 - 05:23   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Is it an innocent home video or a tape that scouts out a 9/11 attack target?
CNN's Jamie Colby reports on the controversy surrounding the footage and the man behind it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE COLBY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It could have been video shot by any New York tourist -- 30 minutes of the city's most famous landmarks -- the World Trade Center, inside and out, from bottom to top. This is the top of the skyscraper, the cameraman says in Arabic. There are views of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, which the camera later captures at night, zooming in on a plane flying over midtown Manhattan.

This tape from 1997 is now in the hands of families of September 11 attack victims, who believe it's no vacation video.

BILL DOYLE, FATHER OF 9/11 VICTIM: It just makes me cringe.

JOAN MOLINARO, MOTHER OF 9/11 VICTIM: When I watched him videotaping from the top of the World Trade Center down and then going right up the Hudson, the direction one of those planes took, him sitting with his arm around that statue, it was just sickening.

COLBY: Bill Doyle and Joan Molinaro each lost sons in the attack. They're among 3,000 plaintiffs suing dozens of banks, Saudi princes and Islamic charities they believe financed terrorism. They see this tape as a scouting mission.

MOLINARO: You can see he's focused in on the antenna of the north tower and in the floors in exactly where -- and he moves the camera -- it's almost exactly where the plane hit.

DOYLE: I know exactly where Joey was and where his office building was and it's almost like he stopped right there and just panned at it.

COLBY: The tape belonged to the man you see here, touring Wall Street landmarks, Ghasoub Al-Abrash Ghalyoun says, "I'll knock them all down." Ghasoub is a suspected al Qaeda operative in Spain, where law enforcement officials have charged him with belonging to a terrorist organization. "You shouldn't arrest a person to ruin his life with no evidence," Ghasoub said after his arrest last April.

Spanish police say other tapes in his home have footage of the Sears Tower in Chicago, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Disneyland.

JACK CORDRAY, ATTORNEY FOR 9/11 FAMILIES: It's obvious that from a viewing of the tapes that this was no mere tourist review of the great symbols of the United States. These were tapes that were made to site paths and approaches for the airplanes that were to be flown into the towers on 9/11.

COLBY: Ghasoub declined to be interviewed. But his attorney says his client has no connection to terrorist activity. "We strongly and categorically deny these tapes had anything to do with the attacks. Even the police have not been able to show this. They were recordings of a family on a trip."

Indeed, more than half the 90 minute tape shows the father of five on vacation and at home. Yet Spain was a meeting place for 9/11 hijackers and where more than 30 alleged Islamic terrorists have been rounded up since 9/11. Ghasoub is out on bail.

Jamie Colby, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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




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