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American Morning

Osama Bin Laden Talking Again; Crews Working to Put Out Massive Fire at Ataturk Airport

Aired May 24, 2006 - 08:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Osama bin Laden is talking again, and the al Qaeda boss says he did not assign Zacarias Moussaoui to be a hijacker on the 9/11 plot, and he also says suspected terrorists held by the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay prison are not 9/11 conspirators either.
Joining us from London, terrorism expert Sajjan Gohel, who is director of the international security branch at the Asia-Pacific Foundation.

Sajjan, good to have you back with us.

SAJJAN GOHEL, ASIA-PACIFIC FOUNDATION: Good to be back.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's play just a little excerpt here first before we start to talk about this. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): I begin by talking about the honorable brother Zacarias Moussaoui. The truth is, he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11. And I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers -- Allah have mercy upon them -- with those raids. And I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Here's the interesting thing to me. He calls him "the honorable brother" and then "the brother." Does that imply, does that confirm, if you will, that Moussaoui is, in fact, linked to al Qaeda?

GOHEL: Well, it does very much suggest that Moussaoui was part of the organization, and would have perhaps played a role in some type of attack. What is interesting, though, Miles, is that this is the first al Qaeda statement that's actually appeared on the Internet. Usually it is handed over to al-Jazeera, and then it's broadcast internationally. This is put up on the Internet. It seems that bin Laden is specifically trying to influence members of the Islamic world, because he's talked about grievances that have existed and how Muslims have been persecuted. It seems that he's now trying to change tact, and then it's another clever strategy of him of trying to raise and ratchet tensions.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, how does this raise and ratchet tensions when he's talking about Moussaoui, for example?

GOHEL: With Moussaoui, he's trying to suggest that the U.S. justice system failed in the sense that it actually convicted an innocent individual, a person who did not allegedly play a role in the September 11th attacks, despite the fact that Moussaoui himself has accepted that he did.

What it -- he also talked about the fact of Guantanamo Bay, how innocent people are held up there, and two al-Jazeera employees. What he's trying to show is that the West is deliberately targeting these individuals. And at the same time he's also trying to reopen the wounds of 9/11, the families' victims. He's -- who have maybe a semblance of closure after the Moussaoui verdict. He's Trying to reopen the wounds, create fear, animosity panic, uncertainty. Bin Laden is known for his propaganda skills, and again...

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about a couple of little meddlesome details if this is the strategy. Moussaoui confessed to things perhaps beyond what he was implicated to. And ultimately, the jury took mercy upon him and spared his life. When Osama bin Laden holds him up as an example of how the West has mistreated people, terrorist suspects, does that really pass muster with -- does that pass the smell test, even on the Arab street?

GOHEL: I fear that it will have some impact. This is another cheap publicity stunt of Osama bin Laden. He's hoping to win new supporters for the al Qaeda cause, enhance his own image within these current constituents, and certainly what he's trying to show that he's not just the financial supporter of al Qaeda, that he himself played a direct role in the attacks. It's highly unlikely that he did. What we know is that there were people like the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. These people actually played a role in coordinating the attacks themselves. Bin Laden was simply just the symbolic figurehead of the organization.

But he is a clever individual. He feeds off the oxygen of publicity, of propaganda, and he will try to focus on any issue he can to exploit it for his own ends. And what worries me is that this is just one statement that's appeared on the Internet. No doubt more in the future, what he'll be hoping to exploit the situation further.

M. O'BRIEN: So he shares one thing with Moussaoui, if what you say is true, he's taking credit for things he didn't necessarily do. In this case, directly saying I assigned the brothers to the 9/11 attack.

GOHEL: Indeed. And what's slightly amusing is that he's waited. Since the verdict was passed on Moussaoui, he had three-and-a-half years to issue this statement. He's only chosen to do it afterwards. If he was willing to be a character witness for Moussaoui, I'm sure the prosecution would have been happy to pay for his airline ticket, and he could have confessed all then and there. But he's an individual that has been shrewd. He's been tactical.

But what worries me more, Miles, is that even though al Qaeda has been affected strategically, it's P.R. machine is still active. And every time bin Laden issues a statement, it has an influence with a terrorist group around the world, and they then will act in trying to orchestrate the mass-casualty attack. And it raises the question, of where is he and why is still able to carry out these messages, so many. I mean, there have been seven of al Qaedas alone this year, three of bin Laden's.

M. O'BRIEN: Sajjan Gohel with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, joining us from London. Thanks very much.

In Las Vegas, they are always looking for ways to keep you closer to the slot machines. And this latest idea will keep you out of long airport lines as well. And potentially make flying more secure. Sounds like an idea that's worth the bet.

Susan Candiotti is in Las Vegas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If mom Tiffany Larsen, struggling with baby in tow, could avoid standing in line to check her luggage...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes. For sure.

CANDIOTTI: She and a business traveler Hal Wheeler (ph) would jump at the chance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely, 100 percent.

CANDIOTTI: Now travelers at McCaran Airport in Las Vegas can check in their luggage at a hotel as early as 12 hours before a flight. The Venetian Hotel is the first to offer the service, called Speed Check Advance. A less secure service was offered prior to the 9/11 attacks.

PAUL PUSATERI, VENETIAN HOTEL: When this idea came across my desk, it was a no-brainer. We believe that this just provides another convenience for our customers.

CANDIOTTI: Guests can take the bags to a hotel kiosk, and at a cost of $20 for up to three bags, get baggage claim checks and a boarding pass.

(on camera): So someone uses the system, how will they avoid all of this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They won't come to this location at all.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Instead, travelers go straight to security and on to their gate. By that time, their bags have been taken from the hotel and loaded onto a truck. The truck is padlocked, sealed and driven to a cargo loading dock away from the main passenger terminal where those bags are X-rayed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the speed, 37 miles per hour.

CANDIOTTI: Each truck is tracked by global-positioning satellites. A green dot when the truck is moving. Red when it isn't.

KEITH WIATER, BAGS TO GO: It'll be tracked how fast it goes, what streets is taken, and when it gets to the facility. If the truck it deviates, we can stop this truck.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): From a security standpoint, airport officials say, X-raying bags off site is a plus, because if a piece of luggage is pulled aside as a risk, passenger terminal operations could continue without disruption.

WIATER: We actually think it's even more secure than the system that we have today.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): So far, only Southwest Airlines is onboard. But other airlines and Las Vegas hotels are expected to join soon.

The Transportation Security Administration suggests it'd like to see the service in other cities.

KIP HAWLEY, TSA ADMINISTRATOR: We certainly want to make it easy for people to adopt it, because it helps us with our processing.

CANDIOTTI: And when travelers spend less time at the airport, hotels are convinced they'll spend more money with them.

(on camera): What would you do with the extra time?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spend it on the tables.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's the plan, right?

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Even in Las Vegas, that's a safe bet.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Las Vegas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: More than 300,000 passengers pass through McCaran Airport in Las Vegas every day. Airport officials say it's going to shave off a good hour of everybody's waiting time. Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: We have some pictures just coming into CNN we want to show you. Spectacular fire at Istanbul's main airport. This is Ataturk Airport. And the fire is blazing in the cargo area of that airport. Thick, black smoke, as you can see, billowing above. You do see an aircraft there, but we're told that air traffic is seriously disrupted at the airport, as you might suspect, given the visibility problems caused by this. But we've seen some evidence that firefighters are on the scene. I have seen some fire hoses pointed in that direction, and then explosive fireballs suggesting there might be some fuel that is burning as well.

S. O'BRIEN: That's massive.

M. O'BRIEN: The fire causing panic at the airport as you might suspect. Hundreds of people trying to escape Ataturk Airport in Istanbul.

S. O'BRIEN: This follows the story we told yesterday about the warship and fighter plane crashing into each other just off of Karpathos yesterday in midair, 27,000 feet. And tensions, obviously, between the two countries have been very high.

M. O'BRIEN: That's Greece and Turkey.

S. O'BRIEN: Turkey, right.

M. O'BRIEN: But we were way ahead of you. We don't want to connect that dot for you. Just to give you the context of this. As we look at this fire, we don't know what's going on there.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it's completely unclear at this point.

M. O'BRIEN: So we're going to try to piece together a few more details. But in the meantime, this is what's happening in Istanbul, Turkey as we speak. And we'll be back with more in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BUSINESS HEADLINES)

M. O'BRIEN: Let's go back to Istanbul now.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Really amazing pictures. As we look at it, it's hard not to imagine that it is not being fed in some way by fuel or some kind of an accelerant. This is the cargo area go area at the Istanbul Airport, Ataturk Airport. Panic among passengers there, as this tremendous fire is taking place. You're looking at live pictures right now. The flames going 100 feet into the air.

SERWER: It's spreading, too, as we're watching it.

M. O'BRIEN: And as we speak, it is still spreading. We saw just a moment ago, a tanker, aircraft, come in and make really, quite frankly, a feeble attempt to try to douse the blaze. It clearly is swamping the capabilities of the authorities on the scene there. We are watching it for you, and we'll have more for you as, clearly, no traffic going in and out of Ataturk Airport at the moment.

S. O'BRIEN: It's amazing how close some of the people are. I mean, not, obviously, just the photographer, but if you take a look, there are people on the -- right here...

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, I'm hoping that's a telephoto shot, and it compresses it a little bit, because it does seem close.

S. O'BRIEN: Ataturk Airport is not a massive airport. It is actually, I think, certainly by U.S. standards, a fairly small airport, and the passenger terminal as opposed to the cargo area, they're not -- you know, there are people apparently fleeing, running out of there, terrified, because these flames are huge.

SERWER: And the big question, of course, is this an accident or perhaps an act of terrorism? We have no idea at this point.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, way too early to tell. It does come, though, on the day after what we were reporting yesterday morning, sort of confrontation between a Greek fighter jet and a Turkish war plane. Ended with the Turkish pilot rescued, but the Greek pilot, I believe, perished in that collision, which took place just not too far off the coast of Karpathos. And that really indicative of a huge problem that these two nations have had for a long time.

SERWER: Decades.

S. O'BRIEN: They have not been the best of friends. Relationship, though, improving over the last six years or so. And you can even see in some of the press accounts that they've been minimizing the collision yesterday in the press. Today, you know, who knows what has caused this? It is way too early to tell. We're trying to get some folks on the ground there to call into us so we can start getting a good sense of what's going on there. But what a remarkable fire.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, and -- it's hard not to, at this point, because we have no idea what is going on. But it is hard -- what might have caused it -- it's hard. We got an airport here. It could very well have been a plane crash which caused this fire. We have not heard any indication one way or another as to what started this fire in the cargo area there. As we say, I mean, given the context of -- and the tenure and times of terror, we can't rule that as a possibility, as well.

But, you know, when you consider what sorts of materials will be held in a cargo area, it seems to me that there is something else there that is causing this tremendous -- these billowing explosive fire with this tremendous, thick black smoke, not unlike what you would see subsequent to a plane crash.

But we are just, as we say, watching right now, trying to get in touch with our people on the ground there. As soon as we can get them, as you look at, by the way, material from our sister network CNN Turk. As soon as we get some people who are there -- there's the tanker, by the way.

Watch the tanker come through. Little bit of water goes on there. But you get sense of the scale as that plane flies through those huge, 100-foot billowing clouds of smoke, that they have a real chore on their hand getting the fire out at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport.

S. O'BRIEN: Local media reports -- their private NTV television apparently reporting that some cargo workers might have been trapped inside that building as this fire is going. It's unclear, of course...

M. O'BRIEN: It's still raging.

SERWER: Yes, look at that. See the flames? You can see through the smoke the flames now.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. All right, we'll -- we're going to take a break. We're going to try to get together some more facts for you and we'll keep you posted. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: It's pretty much the scourge of spring. Some 36 million Americans have runny eyes, itchy eyes, scratchy throats to prove it. So what's a seasonal allergy sufferer to do?

Dr. Gillian Shepherd is allergy specialist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, joins us with some advice for folks. Nice to see you. Good morning.

DR. GILLIAN SHEPHERD, ALLERGY SPECIALIST: Good morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Is this season worse than last year? It feels worse to me.

SHEPHERD: It has been a horrible season for most people, mainly because the winter was warmer and then there was a lot of dampness. So normal pollen counts this time of year, a bad day might be several hundred. per cubic meter of air. And certain places in the country, particularly here in New York, we were seeing 4,000 grains of pollen per cubic meter of air, which made for very severe symptoms for a lot of people.

S. O'BRIEN: What's the worst trigger? I mean, what is the number one thing that...

SHEPHERD: This time of year, what's bothering everybody are the pollen of the trees. Started in the south in February and worked its way north as the weather warmed. And most of the country is over the worst of it now, but the northeast in particular. Boston still is in the peak of tree pollen season and...

S. O'BRIEN: Lucky us.

SHEPHERD: Lucky us. Once they finish pollinating, however, unfortunately, grass comes right behind that. And then in the fall, we have the pollens of weeds.

S. O'BRIEN: So you're predicting a bad, bad season?

SHEPHERD: Hard to tell because now we're moving into more normal weather patterns, but certainly this spring was horrible for most people.

S. O'BRIEN: How do you know if you have a cold or if you have an allergy attack? My daughter, who's five, came home, runny eyes, puffy, really having a hard time breathing, all these things. Not enough to take her to the doctor. I think she has a cold. But I don't know.

SHEPHERD: It's often very difficult, cold or allergies. Allergies never cause fever. Cold symptoms usually ramp up over a couple of days and then go back down again, where as allergy symptoms are pretty much steady throughout the season and correlate with pollen counts. They're worst on dry, windy days. They're better when it's raining and the pollen count's reduced.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's go through some of your tips. Some of them I've heard before, but this is a new one for me. Take your meds before the symptoms appear. So just every morning wake up and automatically dose yourself?

SHEPHERD: A lot of people wait until they're totally miserable with allergy symptoms, and then try and bail out with various medications. What they don't realize is that antihistamines, for example, only work preventively. You take an antihistamine, it binds to a histamine receptor in your body. Then you have the allergy attack. The chemical histamine gets released. It can't do anything. All the receptors are tied up. If you take it after the fact, it really doesn't do anything. It only prevents further symptoms. So it's key to have an antihistamine on board and your other allergy medicines before you go out and overdose on nature.

S. O'BRIEN: Some of the other tips are practical, and I'll just run through them. Exercise early. That's when the pollen will affect you less. And also, duh, keep your windows shut, whether you're in your car or inside your house. And finally, clean the filter of the air conditioner, make sure it's really operating well.

SHEPHERD: Correct.

S. O'BRIEN: Nice to see you. Dr. Gillian Shepherd is an allergy specialist at Cornell Weill. Thanks, appreciate it.

SHEPHERD: Not at all. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Short break. Oh, no, let's head over to Miles, get an update on the story we've been following all morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, quick update on the situation in Istanbul, Turkey. Let's take a look at those pictures coming to us via our sister network CNN Turk. What you see there are some of the passengers and workers there at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport leaving the vicinity. Wise course of action.

We have reports, as you look at a more distant shot of that huge cloud of smoke billowing over the city of Istanbul, Turkey -- we still do not know what the suspected cause might be for that. But as you look at that fire, it seems fairly evident that it is fueled by fuel, frankly. And we do not know whether there's a plane crash involved in all of this, but we do know it's occurring in the cargo area of the Ataturk Airport. And firefighters there doing the best they can to get it under control. There are reports there were people inside that cargo facility at the time of this fire. Trying to get more information, working on it. Back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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