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American Morning

Missile Sting

Aired August 13, 2003 - 09:07   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Question now, are Americans safer now than at this time yesterday thanks to that arrest from the FBI? George Friedman monitors illegal arms transactions for his clients at Stratfor. It's a private intelligence company. He's our guest now live in Austin, Texas.
You have said some striking things. You said you see this as the greatest threat period since 9/11. Why, almost 23 months removed from that event?

GEORGE FRIEDMAN, STRATFOR: Well, if you look at the tempo of operations that Al Qaeda has maintained, they've had major operations spaced out about every, once every two years. Second, Al Qaeda's under pressure to demonstrate that it's still viable, that it can still strike in the United States. For a while there, the U.S. was continually declaring that Al Qaeda was a threat so they could lean back and just bask in that.

Now we're reaching a point where Al Qaeda is going to have to show its hand. And during this period of the anniversary of September 11, not necessarily on September 11, we suspect that Al Qaeda is going to make an attempt to strike again in the United States, and the U.S. government is saying the same thing.

HEMMER: Do you believe Americans have gotten somewhat lackadaisical? Do you believe that we've thought that, well, 9/11 was one event, an isolated event, and it's in the past now?

FRIEDMAN: Well, I think there's a tendency to believe that that was isolated, and some seem to think the security measures that are being taken are overreactions and intrusions that are unnecessary. The fact of the matter is from our point of view, we're in a long-term campaign, and there's no reason to believe that Al Qaeda is not going to try again. Whether they succeed or not, as this operation showed, is another question, but they are going to try.

HEMMER: What do you make of Lakhani? Do you see him as a bigtime dealer, because all the information we have so far is that he's basically small time.

FRIEDMAN: Well, not only is he small time, I don't see any evidence of Al Qaeda involved in this. This is an arms dealer that made contact with the FBI, that moved in to Russia and made contact with Russian intelligence. He seems to have been under control from the beginning. And Al Qaeda wasn't present.

One of the intriguing things are the diamond merchants from New York who they were, what they doing in money laundering. We'll find out more about that today.

But this is not the operation to worry about. This was the operation that was intercepted, it was shut down, it was under control from the beginning. And from the outside at first glance, this looks like a small-time loser.

The problem is, if Al Qaeda itself had gotten ahold of these weapons as Mombasa, had not used them effectively, probably learned a lot of lessons from that. And the thing we really learn here, in those containerships, in those transport systems that are coming in from Europe, a lot things could be hidden. Some of them may not be identified by the FBI.

HEMMER: We've heard a lot of numbers since this story broke yesterday afternoon, 6,000 commercial airliners here in the U.S., airplanes, rather, I should say. If want to retrofit these airliners, the commercial side, it will cost about $10 billion. What do you see right now as a potential solution when it comes to anti-missile technology?

FRIEDMAN: Well, technologically, you can do that, but the retrofitting isn't enough. These airliners can't maneuver like a fighter plane, or we hope they don't try to maneuver like a fighter plane. I wouldn't want to be onboard of one that does. You're really going to have a lot of trouble protecting a very large, slow jet aircraft that's taking off from a metropolitan airport.

The real solution here is intelligence, very aggressively attacking Al Qaeda and the arms trade, wherever it's to be found. I mean, what you saw here is the best defense against missile attack on aircraft, taking out the network that's shipping weapons. Hopefully this was a major player. I suspect he wasn't. But there are some really big players out there that really can supply these weapons, and, you know, U.S. intelligence and international intelligence organizations are going to have to go against them very aggressively.

HEMMER: George Friedman, our guest from Stratfor in Austin, Texas. Thanks.

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 August 13, 2003 - 09:07   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Question now, are Americans safer now than at this time yesterday thanks to that arrest from the FBI? George Friedman monitors illegal arms transactions for his clients at Stratfor. It's a private intelligence company. He's our guest now live in Austin, Texas.
You have said some striking things. You said you see this as the greatest threat period since 9/11. Why, almost 23 months removed from that event?

GEORGE FRIEDMAN, STRATFOR: Well, if you look at the tempo of operations that Al Qaeda has maintained, they've had major operations spaced out about every, once every two years. Second, Al Qaeda's under pressure to demonstrate that it's still viable, that it can still strike in the United States. For a while there, the U.S. was continually declaring that Al Qaeda was a threat so they could lean back and just bask in that.

Now we're reaching a point where Al Qaeda is going to have to show its hand. And during this period of the anniversary of September 11, not necessarily on September 11, we suspect that Al Qaeda is going to make an attempt to strike again in the United States, and the U.S. government is saying the same thing.

HEMMER: Do you believe Americans have gotten somewhat lackadaisical? Do you believe that we've thought that, well, 9/11 was one event, an isolated event, and it's in the past now?

FRIEDMAN: Well, I think there's a tendency to believe that that was isolated, and some seem to think the security measures that are being taken are overreactions and intrusions that are unnecessary. The fact of the matter is from our point of view, we're in a long-term campaign, and there's no reason to believe that Al Qaeda is not going to try again. Whether they succeed or not, as this operation showed, is another question, but they are going to try.

HEMMER: What do you make of Lakhani? Do you see him as a bigtime dealer, because all the information we have so far is that he's basically small time.

FRIEDMAN: Well, not only is he small time, I don't see any evidence of Al Qaeda involved in this. This is an arms dealer that made contact with the FBI, that moved in to Russia and made contact with Russian intelligence. He seems to have been under control from the beginning. And Al Qaeda wasn't present.

One of the intriguing things are the diamond merchants from New York who they were, what they doing in money laundering. We'll find out more about that today.

But this is not the operation to worry about. This was the operation that was intercepted, it was shut down, it was under control from the beginning. And from the outside at first glance, this looks like a small-time loser.

The problem is, if Al Qaeda itself had gotten ahold of these weapons as Mombasa, had not used them effectively, probably learned a lot of lessons from that. And the thing we really learn here, in those containerships, in those transport systems that are coming in from Europe, a lot things could be hidden. Some of them may not be identified by the FBI.

HEMMER: We've heard a lot of numbers since this story broke yesterday afternoon, 6,000 commercial airliners here in the U.S., airplanes, rather, I should say. If want to retrofit these airliners, the commercial side, it will cost about $10 billion. What do you see right now as a potential solution when it comes to anti-missile technology?

FRIEDMAN: Well, technologically, you can do that, but the retrofitting isn't enough. These airliners can't maneuver like a fighter plane, or we hope they don't try to maneuver like a fighter plane. I wouldn't want to be onboard of one that does. You're really going to have a lot of trouble protecting a very large, slow jet aircraft that's taking off from a metropolitan airport.

The real solution here is intelligence, very aggressively attacking Al Qaeda and the arms trade, wherever it's to be found. I mean, what you saw here is the best defense against missile attack on aircraft, taking out the network that's shipping weapons. Hopefully this was a major player. I suspect he wasn't. But there are some really big players out there that really can supply these weapons, and, you know, U.S. intelligence and international intelligence organizations are going to have to go against them very aggressively.

HEMMER: George Friedman, our guest from Stratfor in Austin, Texas. Thanks.

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