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CNN Live Today

Most-Wanted Arrests

Aired June 19, 2003 - 11:13   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.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: More information coming to us from Iraq now, an Iraqi official described as a very big fish is in U.S. custody. General Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti was Saddam Hussein's top bodyguard and officials hope he may have information on the whereabouts of the deposed Iraqi leader.
For more on that capture and what exactly it means, we are joined by CNN Mideast Analyst Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution and the Saban Center for Middle East Peace, nice to see you once again Ken. Thanks for being here.

KEN POLLACK, CNN MIDEAST ANALYST: Sure.

COLLINS: Can you tell us a little bit about what exactly this catch means? We know he's number four on the list of 55 most wanted. What will they be specifically looking to him to learn?

POLLACK: Sure. Well, Heidi, even though he is, as you described him, number four on the U.S. most wanted list, he probably is the third, maybe even the second most powerful man in Saddam's former regime.

Saddam Hussein relied on his second son, Qusay, to do a lot of things. Everything he didn't rely on Qusay for he basically relied on Abid. Abid was -- we call him his personal secretary. That's not a good way to describe him. In reality he was more like Saddam's chief of staff and he was an extremely important member of Saddam's coterie.

As a result, U.S. personnel are going to be looking to Abid to find out a whole bunch of things, first where is Saddam Hussein? What was he doing during the war? How did we miss him, assuming that we missed him? How did he hide out? What is he doing now? What kind of resistance is Saddam coordinating? How much of the resistance is actually reporting back to Saddam Hussein?

And beyond that there will, of course, be the inevitable questions about weapons of mass destruction. It's unclear exactly how much Abid knows about the weapons of mass destruction but given how high up he was in the Iraqi chain of command, as I said, third, maybe even second on the list, he clearly will have at least a sense of the broad outlines of Iraq's WMD programs.

COLLINS: But, Ken, obviously the challenge is going to be getting that information out of him which in the past when the United States has actually gotten a hold of some other leaders on that list not much information is revealed. What do you think will be different about this if anything? POLLACK: Well, interestingly, capturing Abid may be most helpful with some of the other people in custody. What we've been finding out the little bits that we're hearing from people who are doing the interrogations is that a lot of these guys are unwilling to speak, a lot of these men and women are unwilling to speak because they all believe that Saddam Hussein is going to come back to power.

Capturing someone like Abid will be a very powerful symbol to Iraqis in general and to those in custody that, in fact, Saddam is not coming back, that the U.S. and coalition forces are going to hunt down the members of the regime until they are caught and there is simply no chance for them to escape and to make a return to power.

Abid himself, as you point out, is going to be a very tough nut to crack. He is extremely loyal to Saddam Hussein. Every expectation is that it will take a long time before he starts to talk.

COLLINS: Is there any chance, Ken, that he doesn't know this information about WMD and maybe even the whereabouts of Saddam as you say because of how high up he was in that chain?

POLLACK: It's certainly possible, Heidi. He may not have a complete knowledge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. You know Saddam played these divide and conquer games so he never told everyone everything that there was to know. He kept the whole picture very tightly to himself.

That said, Abid was close enough to Saddam that, and he was one of the few people who had independent decision making authority, so that there's every expectation that he has at least some knowledge about the weapons of mass destruction.

He may not know the specifics. He may not know the details of where the stuff was, exactly how it was constituted, who was moving it, how it would be reconstituted in short order but he ought to have a vague sense, a broad sense of what the Iraqis had.

COLLINS: Ken, I can't let you go before I ask you about the most recent violence in Iraq, soldiers being attacked, sort of bombarded in these different instances. Seventeen U.S. soldiers are now dead from these very attacks. What about the safety of U.S. troops right now?

POLLACK: Well, look, Iraq is an unstable country. We do not yet have complete control over the country. There are still major security problems and there are, always remember, a lot of people in Iraq with guns. This is a very heavily armed population.

And, in some ways, given the number of people and the number of guns in the country, if the situation, the security situation were worse, you'd see a lot more Americans getting shot at.

So, I think what we're seeing, Jane Arraf described it very nicely, the way I would describe it is this is a reason for concern. It indicates that we do not yet have control over the security situation there and that is going to be critical for any kind of successful reconstruction. But given the circumstances that we're in, it's not yet a sign of panic. It's not yet a sign of real alarm. This is the kind of situation which we hopefully will be able to bring under control in the next weeks maybe months.

COLLINS: All right, CNN's Mideast Analyst Ken Pollack, thank you once again for your wonderful insight as always.

POLLACK: Thank you, Heidi.

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 June 19, 2003 - 11:13   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: More information coming to us from Iraq now, an Iraqi official described as a very big fish is in U.S. custody. General Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti was Saddam Hussein's top bodyguard and officials hope he may have information on the whereabouts of the deposed Iraqi leader.
For more on that capture and what exactly it means, we are joined by CNN Mideast Analyst Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution and the Saban Center for Middle East Peace, nice to see you once again Ken. Thanks for being here.

KEN POLLACK, CNN MIDEAST ANALYST: Sure.

COLLINS: Can you tell us a little bit about what exactly this catch means? We know he's number four on the list of 55 most wanted. What will they be specifically looking to him to learn?

POLLACK: Sure. Well, Heidi, even though he is, as you described him, number four on the U.S. most wanted list, he probably is the third, maybe even the second most powerful man in Saddam's former regime.

Saddam Hussein relied on his second son, Qusay, to do a lot of things. Everything he didn't rely on Qusay for he basically relied on Abid. Abid was -- we call him his personal secretary. That's not a good way to describe him. In reality he was more like Saddam's chief of staff and he was an extremely important member of Saddam's coterie.

As a result, U.S. personnel are going to be looking to Abid to find out a whole bunch of things, first where is Saddam Hussein? What was he doing during the war? How did we miss him, assuming that we missed him? How did he hide out? What is he doing now? What kind of resistance is Saddam coordinating? How much of the resistance is actually reporting back to Saddam Hussein?

And beyond that there will, of course, be the inevitable questions about weapons of mass destruction. It's unclear exactly how much Abid knows about the weapons of mass destruction but given how high up he was in the Iraqi chain of command, as I said, third, maybe even second on the list, he clearly will have at least a sense of the broad outlines of Iraq's WMD programs.

COLLINS: But, Ken, obviously the challenge is going to be getting that information out of him which in the past when the United States has actually gotten a hold of some other leaders on that list not much information is revealed. What do you think will be different about this if anything? POLLACK: Well, interestingly, capturing Abid may be most helpful with some of the other people in custody. What we've been finding out the little bits that we're hearing from people who are doing the interrogations is that a lot of these guys are unwilling to speak, a lot of these men and women are unwilling to speak because they all believe that Saddam Hussein is going to come back to power.

Capturing someone like Abid will be a very powerful symbol to Iraqis in general and to those in custody that, in fact, Saddam is not coming back, that the U.S. and coalition forces are going to hunt down the members of the regime until they are caught and there is simply no chance for them to escape and to make a return to power.

Abid himself, as you point out, is going to be a very tough nut to crack. He is extremely loyal to Saddam Hussein. Every expectation is that it will take a long time before he starts to talk.

COLLINS: Is there any chance, Ken, that he doesn't know this information about WMD and maybe even the whereabouts of Saddam as you say because of how high up he was in that chain?

POLLACK: It's certainly possible, Heidi. He may not have a complete knowledge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. You know Saddam played these divide and conquer games so he never told everyone everything that there was to know. He kept the whole picture very tightly to himself.

That said, Abid was close enough to Saddam that, and he was one of the few people who had independent decision making authority, so that there's every expectation that he has at least some knowledge about the weapons of mass destruction.

He may not know the specifics. He may not know the details of where the stuff was, exactly how it was constituted, who was moving it, how it would be reconstituted in short order but he ought to have a vague sense, a broad sense of what the Iraqis had.

COLLINS: Ken, I can't let you go before I ask you about the most recent violence in Iraq, soldiers being attacked, sort of bombarded in these different instances. Seventeen U.S. soldiers are now dead from these very attacks. What about the safety of U.S. troops right now?

POLLACK: Well, look, Iraq is an unstable country. We do not yet have complete control over the country. There are still major security problems and there are, always remember, a lot of people in Iraq with guns. This is a very heavily armed population.

And, in some ways, given the number of people and the number of guns in the country, if the situation, the security situation were worse, you'd see a lot more Americans getting shot at.

So, I think what we're seeing, Jane Arraf described it very nicely, the way I would describe it is this is a reason for concern. It indicates that we do not yet have control over the security situation there and that is going to be critical for any kind of successful reconstruction. But given the circumstances that we're in, it's not yet a sign of panic. It's not yet a sign of real alarm. This is the kind of situation which we hopefully will be able to bring under control in the next weeks maybe months.

COLLINS: All right, CNN's Mideast Analyst Ken Pollack, thank you once again for your wonderful insight as always.

POLLACK: Thank you, Heidi.

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