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American Morning

Talk With Milt Bearden

Aired July 25, 2003 - 08:04   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.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The plan for the terror attacks that killed 3,000 people on 9/11 was born in a Philippines apartment back in 1995. That is what a top al Qaeda operative is confirming to his U.S. interrogators. And CNN has gotten hold of documents showing that the Filipino police warned the FBI about the plot. But authorities there say the American agency did not take them seriously.
Maria Ressa has this exclusive report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This apartment in Manila was the home of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who had become al Qaeda's third highest ranking leader by the time he was arrested in 2003. Now in U.S. custody, Khalid told his interrogators while here, he and his nephew, Ramsey Yusef, who carried out the first World Trade Center bombing, plotted what would become the 9/11 attacks seven years later.

In 1994, the two tested airport security; Khalid on a flight from Manila to Seoul, Yusef on a flight from Hong Kong to Taipei.

Khalid told authorities they each converted 14 bottles of contact lens solution into bombs by replacing their contents with an inexpensive liquid explosive readily available in the Philippines. In place of a detonator, Khalid said he taped a metal bolt to the arch of his foot. He then wore clothing and jewelry with metal to confuse airport security.

He said he and Yusef placed condoms in their bags to support their cover story that they were traveling to meet women.

Khalid boasted the test worked flawlessly. In December 1994, Yusef would actually plant and explode a bomb on a Philippine Airlines flight. They were set to carry out an audacious plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific that the FBI estimates would have killed 4,000 people. But an accidental fire in their safe house apartment led to the bust up of their cell.

The only one arrested in manila was Abdul Hakim Murad, Yusef's classmate, trained as a commercial pilot in four schools in the United States.

Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza interrogated him and discovered the blueprint for 9/11.

COL. RODOLFO MENDOZA, FORMER INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATOR: They have a plan to crash the airplane, the commercial jetliner, into the specific tonight and they have done it. I believe that all this plan, all plans are supposed to be executed.

RESSA: Other plots discovered in Manila, to assassinate the U.S. president and attack nuclear power plants in the U.S.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RESSA: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said the 1995 operation was his first for al Qaeda. Through the years, as he went up the ranks, he passed along the lessons he learned then to other operatives he controlled, like the millennium bomber, Ahmed Rasam (ph), who spoke about liquid bombs, and the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, who hid explosives in his shoes.

Philippine authorities say all the information they discovered in 1995 was handed over to the FBI.

This is Maria Ressa in manila -- back to you, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Maria, thanks for that report.

American intelligence agencies had other threads of information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks, but failed to put them together. That is the conclusion of the congressional report on the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks.

Milt Bearden is a 30 year veteran of the CIA and his new book, "The Main Enemy," is about the end of the cold war.

Milt is a guest in our Washington bureau this morning.

Good morning.

Nice to see you.

MILT BEARDEN, CO-AUTHOR, "THE MAIN ENEMY": Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: As we have just heard from Maria's report, repeated warnings ignored across-the-board. The report says that there was no specific smoking gun, no one individual necessarily to blame.

Anything in this report that surprised you, that shocked you?

BEARDEN: Well, I don't think we're going to find much in that report that we don't really know from earlier revelations. But the totality of it coming together in 900 pages here at the end of July two years, almost two years later, is going to have a profound effect on those who read it.

We're also looking back at the events in 1995 with the knowledge of what happened on 9/11, and it's all going to be much clearer than it might have been at any point in the intervening six years.

O'BRIEN: Former FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote a commentary to the "Wall Street Journal" and he basically said that Congress has to fund the security agencies better. And I want to show you a little bit of what he wrote. He said, "I requested an additional -- 864 additional counter-terrorism people, agents, linguists, analysts, at a cost of $380.8 million. The FBI received five people, $7.4 million of that request."

When you read that, that's fairly shocking. Do you think across- the-board all branches of security are facing the same problems?

BEARDEN: Well, I think that the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, also has stated that during those same five years he said I'll need a billion a year for five years to do this thing right. And he didn't get any of that money, as well.

I think we're going to find enough, enough criticism or blame to go around for everybody and every administration, from 1995 until 9/11, 2001.

O'BRIEN: Also a shock to me, at least, was the reading in the report about the lack of ability to just manage and handle the amount of information and intelligence that was coming in, that things would sit in offices untranslated because there were just not the people to physically sit down and do it.

Has that changed? BEARDEN: That can't change. I mean imagine, let's say that NSA picks up a few billion exchanges of conversation or pagers or other information in a given day and then imagine you have Americans that have to sit down and pore through this. The task at some point almost becomes impossible and particularly in the intercept area. We've just, you know, to think that we're going to be able to manage that any better by throwing some more money at it is quite possibly wishful thinking.

O'BRIEN: How about by throwing technology at it? FBI Director Mueller told the family members who lost loved ones in 9/11 that the technology has improved dramatically. Is that accurate? And has it improved enough?

BEARDEN: Sure it has. It's improved to the point that you can get a machine to do what people used to have to do. I, you know, 40 years ago when I was in the Air Force, I would listen to Chinese communications and my god, you know, we sat down individual youngsters who had learned Chinese to listen to that.

Today, you might be able to get a machine to do part of that for you. But, still, it's going to have to be someone who speaks almost native, let's say, Arabic, from that region, from that clan, from that tribe, to listen to two cousins who are back and forth on the phone in a 20 minute conversation and find something that really means, is a nugget of intelligence. And that's going to be very, very difficult and we're going to have to expect that there will not be zero defects in this.

O'BRIEN: Finally, I want to ask you about a big chunk of the report that was completely excised, 28 pages or so about the role of foreign governments. BEARDEN: Sure.

O'BRIEN: How critical do you think this lack of information is?

BEARDEN: Well, there's two sides to that. One, it's been redacted for possibly good reason. Let's say that we went to the Saudis and said hey look here, you've got to give us A, B, C and D, and they said OK, but you've got to promise that you'll not give it to the "New York Times" and CNN if we do. And we'll say yes. And so we've redacted that. And we've redacted it probably not for the reasons that are discussed, to protect the Saudis, but because we want to have them continue to be able to give us that information.

But having said that, people who pore over the 900 pages will, their eyes will glaze over. What's going to happen is we're going to get into the speculation on what the 29 pages that are blank contained. And that's going to be part of the game this summer.

O'BRIEN: Interesting.

All right, Milt Bearden is the author of "The Main Enemy."

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Appreciate your time.

BEARDEN: Thanks a lot.

O'BRIEN: You can log onto cnn.com/politics for an interactive gallery on the key players in the 9/11 report. You can also view an interactive time line on pre-9/11 intelligence.

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 July 25, 2003 - 08:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The plan for the terror attacks that killed 3,000 people on 9/11 was born in a Philippines apartment back in 1995. That is what a top al Qaeda operative is confirming to his U.S. interrogators. And CNN has gotten hold of documents showing that the Filipino police warned the FBI about the plot. But authorities there say the American agency did not take them seriously.
Maria Ressa has this exclusive report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This apartment in Manila was the home of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who had become al Qaeda's third highest ranking leader by the time he was arrested in 2003. Now in U.S. custody, Khalid told his interrogators while here, he and his nephew, Ramsey Yusef, who carried out the first World Trade Center bombing, plotted what would become the 9/11 attacks seven years later.

In 1994, the two tested airport security; Khalid on a flight from Manila to Seoul, Yusef on a flight from Hong Kong to Taipei.

Khalid told authorities they each converted 14 bottles of contact lens solution into bombs by replacing their contents with an inexpensive liquid explosive readily available in the Philippines. In place of a detonator, Khalid said he taped a metal bolt to the arch of his foot. He then wore clothing and jewelry with metal to confuse airport security.

He said he and Yusef placed condoms in their bags to support their cover story that they were traveling to meet women.

Khalid boasted the test worked flawlessly. In December 1994, Yusef would actually plant and explode a bomb on a Philippine Airlines flight. They were set to carry out an audacious plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific that the FBI estimates would have killed 4,000 people. But an accidental fire in their safe house apartment led to the bust up of their cell.

The only one arrested in manila was Abdul Hakim Murad, Yusef's classmate, trained as a commercial pilot in four schools in the United States.

Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza interrogated him and discovered the blueprint for 9/11.

COL. RODOLFO MENDOZA, FORMER INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATOR: They have a plan to crash the airplane, the commercial jetliner, into the specific tonight and they have done it. I believe that all this plan, all plans are supposed to be executed.

RESSA: Other plots discovered in Manila, to assassinate the U.S. president and attack nuclear power plants in the U.S.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RESSA: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said the 1995 operation was his first for al Qaeda. Through the years, as he went up the ranks, he passed along the lessons he learned then to other operatives he controlled, like the millennium bomber, Ahmed Rasam (ph), who spoke about liquid bombs, and the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, who hid explosives in his shoes.

Philippine authorities say all the information they discovered in 1995 was handed over to the FBI.

This is Maria Ressa in manila -- back to you, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Maria, thanks for that report.

American intelligence agencies had other threads of information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks, but failed to put them together. That is the conclusion of the congressional report on the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks.

Milt Bearden is a 30 year veteran of the CIA and his new book, "The Main Enemy," is about the end of the cold war.

Milt is a guest in our Washington bureau this morning.

Good morning.

Nice to see you.

MILT BEARDEN, CO-AUTHOR, "THE MAIN ENEMY": Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: As we have just heard from Maria's report, repeated warnings ignored across-the-board. The report says that there was no specific smoking gun, no one individual necessarily to blame.

Anything in this report that surprised you, that shocked you?

BEARDEN: Well, I don't think we're going to find much in that report that we don't really know from earlier revelations. But the totality of it coming together in 900 pages here at the end of July two years, almost two years later, is going to have a profound effect on those who read it.

We're also looking back at the events in 1995 with the knowledge of what happened on 9/11, and it's all going to be much clearer than it might have been at any point in the intervening six years.

O'BRIEN: Former FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote a commentary to the "Wall Street Journal" and he basically said that Congress has to fund the security agencies better. And I want to show you a little bit of what he wrote. He said, "I requested an additional -- 864 additional counter-terrorism people, agents, linguists, analysts, at a cost of $380.8 million. The FBI received five people, $7.4 million of that request."

When you read that, that's fairly shocking. Do you think across- the-board all branches of security are facing the same problems?

BEARDEN: Well, I think that the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, also has stated that during those same five years he said I'll need a billion a year for five years to do this thing right. And he didn't get any of that money, as well.

I think we're going to find enough, enough criticism or blame to go around for everybody and every administration, from 1995 until 9/11, 2001.

O'BRIEN: Also a shock to me, at least, was the reading in the report about the lack of ability to just manage and handle the amount of information and intelligence that was coming in, that things would sit in offices untranslated because there were just not the people to physically sit down and do it.

Has that changed? BEARDEN: That can't change. I mean imagine, let's say that NSA picks up a few billion exchanges of conversation or pagers or other information in a given day and then imagine you have Americans that have to sit down and pore through this. The task at some point almost becomes impossible and particularly in the intercept area. We've just, you know, to think that we're going to be able to manage that any better by throwing some more money at it is quite possibly wishful thinking.

O'BRIEN: How about by throwing technology at it? FBI Director Mueller told the family members who lost loved ones in 9/11 that the technology has improved dramatically. Is that accurate? And has it improved enough?

BEARDEN: Sure it has. It's improved to the point that you can get a machine to do what people used to have to do. I, you know, 40 years ago when I was in the Air Force, I would listen to Chinese communications and my god, you know, we sat down individual youngsters who had learned Chinese to listen to that.

Today, you might be able to get a machine to do part of that for you. But, still, it's going to have to be someone who speaks almost native, let's say, Arabic, from that region, from that clan, from that tribe, to listen to two cousins who are back and forth on the phone in a 20 minute conversation and find something that really means, is a nugget of intelligence. And that's going to be very, very difficult and we're going to have to expect that there will not be zero defects in this.

O'BRIEN: Finally, I want to ask you about a big chunk of the report that was completely excised, 28 pages or so about the role of foreign governments. BEARDEN: Sure.

O'BRIEN: How critical do you think this lack of information is?

BEARDEN: Well, there's two sides to that. One, it's been redacted for possibly good reason. Let's say that we went to the Saudis and said hey look here, you've got to give us A, B, C and D, and they said OK, but you've got to promise that you'll not give it to the "New York Times" and CNN if we do. And we'll say yes. And so we've redacted that. And we've redacted it probably not for the reasons that are discussed, to protect the Saudis, but because we want to have them continue to be able to give us that information.

But having said that, people who pore over the 900 pages will, their eyes will glaze over. What's going to happen is we're going to get into the speculation on what the 29 pages that are blank contained. And that's going to be part of the game this summer.

O'BRIEN: Interesting.

All right, Milt Bearden is the author of "The Main Enemy."

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Appreciate your time.

BEARDEN: Thanks a lot.

O'BRIEN: You can log onto cnn.com/politics for an interactive gallery on the key players in the 9/11 report. You can also view an interactive time line on pre-9/11 intelligence.

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