Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Journalist Charges U.S. Behind Israel's Attacks in Lebanon; Target: USA; Interview with Dikembe Mutombo

Aired August 14, 2006 - 08:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to the program. I'm Miles O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Soledad O'Brien.

Journalist Seymour Hersh says the U.S. knew far more about Israel's moves on Lebanon and Hezbollah than previously believed. He writes in "The New Yorker" magazine this, quote: "The Bush administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks." Those retaliatory attacks coming after Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers in a cross border raid.

Let's get right to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. He's in Jerusalem this morning. Hey, Wolf, good morning.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

It's an explosive, explosive charge that Seymour Hersh writes in "The New Yorker," namely that the United States and Israel conspired even before the July 12th killing and kidnapping of those Israeli soldiers to go after Hezbollah, that the U.S. worked closely with Israel in the military operations, the planning.

It's certainly reverberating in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, reinforcing a notion that is widely suspected anyhow that the United States is directly behind Israel in all of this. Now, the accusations are being forcefully and repeatedly denied by U.S. officials at the White House, at the Pentagon, at the State Department, the National Security Council, as well as here on Israel.

And yesterday on CNN's "LATE EDITION," I asked Sy Hersh to respond to the charge that his sourcing was not very good.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEYMOUR HERSH, "NEW YORKER" MAGAZINE: I would not write something -- and I understand that this is going to be all over the Middle East. It is already, as far as I hear. And I understand the implications of the story. All of us do. And nobody is suggesting that Israel wouldn't have done what it did without the Americans. They didn't -- Israeli didn't need the White House to go after Hezbollah. But it's the idea that they got tremendous amount of support from this White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: And the Israelis did get a tremendous amount of political support from day one, going back to July 12. There was an enormous amount of support from President Bush, from the vice president, the secretary of state. All of the Bush administration gave the Israelis the backing that they certainly did -- they certainly wanted.

But it's one thing to give the Israeli government the kind of political support that the Israelis wanted, it's another thing to make the charge that the U.S. was already planning with Israel this military operation in advance of the incident that sparked it. And on that front there -- there are around the board denials coming in fast and furious -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: What is the sense this morning, Wolf, that this cease-fire can really hold or will not?

BLITZER: There's a lot of pessimism. There's a lot of sense that , certainly here in Israel, that there's so many wild cards out there that one loose trigger, one loose incident, could recreate the kind of Katyusha rockets coming into northern Israel, the kind of Israeli airstrikes going into Lebanon. We would, in effect, see the situation go back to day one.

On the other hand, there is a sense, also, that the Lebanese government of prime minister Fouad Siniora really wants to see this cease-fire work. The Israeli government would like to see it work. The question is Hezbollah. And more than that, the question is what about Iran, which has a strong alliance with Hezbollah? What's in the Iranian interest right now: to see a sense of calm return to Israel and Lebanon, or to see the tensions remain at this fever pitch?

And on that issue, the Iranian connection, and to a certain degree the Syrian involvement, there's a lot of questions being raised right now. And no one, at least here, is certain that they have any hard and fast answers.

S. O'BRIEN: Wolf Blitzer for us this morning. Be sure to watch "THE SITUATION ROOM" with Wolf every day this week from Jerusalem. Thanks, Wolf. "THE SITUATION ROOM" can be seen 4:00 to 6:00 Eastern, and again, 7:00 to 8:00 -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, just about every morning, we tell you about a suicide bombing overseas. It's a wonder terrorists have not brought this horrible tactic to our shores, but it may just be a matter of time before it happens. And some folks, as a result of that, are taking action now.

AMERICAN MORNING's Dan Lothian with more from Princeton, New Jersey.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): It's something that is nonstop for you?

URI MENDELBERG, INTL. SECURITY AND DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Yes. For me, if it is a profession, we have to think about that all the time.

LOTHIAN (voice-over): Uri Mendelberg, a former Israeli soldier, is consumed with preventing a suicide bomber from striking on U.S. soil. His knowledge comes from experience up close.

MENDELBERG: Instinct that has been developed over living in Israel for 25 or 30 years, and looking what happens.

LOTHIAN: Now, the Israeli security and defense company Mendelberg directs is bringing the issue into focus on America's radar, educating a country to the unspeakable.

JEAN SAFRA, INTL. SECURITY AND DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Used to call it a suicide bomber.

LOTHIAN: With his colleague Jean Safra, he's training private and government security officers to, among other things, identify and potentially neutralize suicide bombers.

SAFRA: People come and say, OK, give us your experience. Give us your knowledge. We need it. We need it now.

LOTHIAN (on camera): Is this training on target? Is there a real thread of suicide bombers plotting to attack a crowded mall in New Jersey or a sold-out concert in California? Before 9/11, there would have been a lot of doubters, but since then, there's been growing demand for this specialized training, from law enforcement to private security firms. For many, it's a real concern.

(voice-over): That's where the training is so intense, so real. In this exercise, a suicide bomber is charging forward to set off his explosive belt, but is quickly confronted. One potential target, he says, could be a mall packed with shoppers.

MENDELBERG: Could be an easy target, a soft target, because nobody is guarding these malls.

LOTHIAN: But that's changing. Malls across the country are sending their security guards to his classes and other programs to be trained in spotting a suicide bomber long before a cord is pulled.

MENDELBERG: Is he looking for the guy who's wearing a long coat or not in the summer or carrying a suitcase? What is the indication that something is wrong, the guy is out of place?

LOTHIAN: Fighting this threat begins with law enforcement, but doesn't end there.

SAFRA: In my country, we do a lot of public awareness, a lot of security awareness, about suicide bombing.

LOTHIAN (on camera): Everybody is looking out for everything, then?

SAFRA: Yes, everybody is looking around.

MENDELBERG: You've got to teach people a certain awareness of potential dangers, because you don't know when it's going to come.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Princeton, New Jersey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: The failure of our intelligence system to connect the dots -- a lack of imagination was another term used -- is what was stated in that report post-9/11 attacks. It allowed us really to be blindsided by those attacks. The question is, five years later, how far have we come?

Joining us to talk a little bit about this is Gary Berntsen. He is a former CIA field commander in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And in Washington, Farhana Ali, an expert on counterterrorism with the Rand Corporation.

Gary, let's begin with you. Some questions have been raised about the British conduct their intelligence versus the United States. In the case of this plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, they allowed the investigation to percolate as the plot percolated, and waited until it was actually rather mature before they swooped in. It seems to me the U.S. approach is just the opposite. You hear of a conversation, you make the arrest. Which is the best way to go?

GARY BERNTSEN, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Well, both of these types of tactics have been used. The U.S. has used both. For a number of years in the 1990s, what was used by the FBI and CIA was a thing called bubble tap, which was the process by which we took down cells early on, all over the place, to destroy infrastructure, terrorist infrastructure. We have let cases run very, very long into the process, and done captures. But most of that has been overseas with the CIA.

M. O'BRIEN: Because you have a little more flexibility. I guess the concern is if you let things percolate too long, you could lose sight of people and a plot could happen.

BERNTSEN: You also have an issue in the United States what we call a duty to warn. If we receive information that there's a significant threat, we have a duty to warn those individuals well in advance that there is a threat, and these -- because we can't that someone killed in the United States, an American killed somewhere, because we are allowing a terrorist to move upward in an organization. We are required to act.

M. O'BRIEN: So there's no etched-in-stone answer.

BERNTSEN: No, there isn't.

(CROSSTALK)

M. O'BRIEN: Farhana, let's talk about human intelligence, because that was one of the huge things that was brought out in the 9/11 Commission Report, sort of an over-reliance on the gadgets, if you will, the satellite, the signal intelligence as opposed to the human intelligence. And the war on terror sort of needs strong human intelligence people who speak Urdu, like you, for example.

Are there -- how is that recruiting going? Are there enough people who have the cultural and language skills to become good spies against terror organizations?

FARHANA ALI, RAND CORPORATION: This is still a great capability that needs to be improved. In fact, instead of increasing our numbers within the analytical core of the intelligence organization, we really should provide those analysts with language capabilities. Critical languages still don't exist. For example, in addition to Urdu, languages such as Farsi and Arabic are critical, because of the conflicts in the war, because of Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the recent crisis brewing in the Middle East.

The problem is, though, Miles, is to recruit American Muslims, for example, is very difficult, because the war on terrorism is perceived very much as a war against Islam, because of the tensions continue to exist between the west and Muslim world.

And the other problem is one of logistics. If you have an American Muslim with the language capabilities, then it takes that person quite a long time. They're in processing for much longer than American who has never gone overseas, because of their familial sections, because of foreign contacts and foreign nationals that they're connected with, so that also -- that process then becomes very discouraging for someone with those language capabilities.

M. O'BRIEN: So that's an interesting catch-22. A lot of the things you would consider some of the assets that somebody brings to the table, language, cultural, connections, can actually be a detriment and can make it impossible for them to become a spy?

ALI: Not exactly. I mean, there are actually quite a number of intelligence officers with some of these language capabilities. The issue really is maintenance. You can teach someone Arabic, but you have to -- maintaining the language is far more difficult. It requires continued practice, so that you -- if someone with a basic skill, then you need to actually -- the intelligence community needs to do a better job of identifying those officers with those languages and send them to the field. Someone with Arabic capabilities should not be sent to Latin America or should be working the Latin American desk.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, let's hope they're not doing that.

Gary, do you have some thoughts on this?

BERNTSEN: I spent a number of years and did recruiting in the United States for our recruitment center, and we found native speakers.

M. O'BRIEN: So they're there.

BERNTSEN: It's tough work. They're there. You have to really make the personal effort to go out, find them, bring them in. We recruited them. And there's a number of operations officers, not sources, ops officers, that are collectors, that are native Muslims. You have native Arabic speakers, Persian speakers, Urdu speakers. We have them, not many. Not enough, but we have them. And Muslims are stepping up to the United States in the war on terror, but we just need more.

All right, I want to get from both of you a quick final thought on where you see -- we're focusing on this all day on Target: USA. What is the biggest concern you see inside the domestic and international spy apparatus that the U.S. runs that needs to be worked on?

BERNTSEN: Well, one phenomenon right now is because there has been such a great expansion, we have a disproportionate number of junior officers right now. This makes control very difficult for the senior guys, you know, where before maybe we had one senior officer for every three junior. It may be one senior for every eight right now. This is a challenge. We've got good people there. Steve Kappas is the deputy director of the CIA. He knows what he's doing. I've got confidence, but this is a big challenge.

M. O'BRIEN: Farhana, what do you see.

ALI: Well, to put a positive spin on this, I think one of the things that's being done very well after 9/11 is our close collaboration with foreign liaison officers, and with our intel officers here, and that actually has led to several plots being foiled.

Although let me go back to the point raised earlier about intelligence and intelligence collection. The intelligence agency has always been reactive. We are obsessed with data, and so while we increased our data collection, which has been a good thing, what at the end of the day good intelligence is about understanding your adversary.

So while I agree with Gary that there are officers that I even know of with these language capabilities, what we still don't have is cultural understanding and that mindset. Along with linguistic capabilities, someone who knows Iraq-Arabic dialect also needs to know the Iraqi mindset and how the sense of that culture in order to stay one step ahead of al Qaeda.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you both. Gary Berntsen and Farhana Ali.

ALI: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Appreciate your insights this morning -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come, I'm going to be talking with NBA star Dikembe Mutombo. He's a hero off the court as well. He's got a special project, saving lives in his native Congo. We'll tell you his story just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Dikembe Mutombo, well, before was an NBA star, he was a student at Georgetown University studying to be a doctor so he could return to his native Congo and save lives. Then one day the Georgetown basketball coach noticed this 7'2" guy, and the rest, as they say, is history. He's become a multimillionaire NBA superstar, but Mutombo's never forgotten his promise to take care of his people in Congo.

Now the would-be doctor has spent $15 million of his own money building a hospital there. Dikembe Mutombo is our guest this morning.

It's so nice to see you.

DIKEMBE MUTOMBO, PRO BASKETBALL PLAYER: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: You're literally days away from opening this hospital.

MUTOMBO: September 2nd.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. So how does it feel?

MUTOMBO: It feels so good, and it's important. I think I'm very emotional about it. I think it's going to brings a lot of tears to my eyes, and to see my mom's name being put on the stone, and it's such a great building, and I'm so happy about it.

S. O'BRIEN: Tell me a little bit about the building. What's your hospital going to offer that's not in Congo already that you desperately need?

MUTOMBO: It is first (INAUDIBLE) of hospital being built in the country in 40 years, you know, such a great building like that (ph). And everything that was there was left by the colonial town (ph). So we're kind of excited. We are taking part in the changing of the living condition of the people in Africa.

S. O'BRIEN: Congo clearly, telling you nothing that you don't already know, a huge crisis. A civil war that's claimed by some estimates since 1988 three million lives.

MUTOMBO: More than that.

S. O'BRIEN: And of course all the people who've been displaced around the country. Average life expectancy, I mean, let's throw some of these stats, and they're terrible statistics, on the screen here. Average life expectancy is 44 years. Twenty percent of the kids die before the age of five. A million Congolese live with HIV and AIDS. And A Lot of the diseases I guess are preventable.

MUTOMBO: Including measles, that's killing and taking away the lives of a lot...

S. O'BRIEN: I mean, things that you could just vaccinate for.

MUTOMBO: The vaccine costs like 55 cents, and it is amazing that we can not vaccinate those kids. And somehow we have to find the solution. And I'm glad that I'm part of the solution that is taking place.

S. O'BRIEN: The hospital is being named for your mom, Biamba Marie Mutombo. I read that she died -- she was ten minutes away from medical care, but because of the civil unrest, couldn't get there.

You still have problems in Congo. How will you be able to change the situation? I mean, a fabulous hospital that no one can access because of the civil situation is a problem.

MUTOMBO: Somewhere, somebody has to do it. They have to give some initiative being taken. If there's no initiative being taken by somebody, it's hard for the people to figure out how we're going to solve this problem.

S. O'BRIEN: Elections now.

MUTOMBO: The election is now. Hopefully the result will come out soon, and everything will be put behind and we will move on to the free society and that will -- I just feel happy that the foundation gives something that nobody else has done before and everybody's going to be talking about.

S. O'BRIEN: Fifteen million dollars of your own money, and the rest was raised -- that's a ton of money. The rest was private donations, as well. You know, we do a lot of stories on sports stars.

MUTOMBO: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: And usually this is not the story. The story is not their charitable giving. The story is usually something's gone horribly wrong. Do you think that you're seeing a change -- I mean, are you the exception to the rule, or do you think there's a change out there?

MUTOMBO: I want -- I was always want to do something. But I don't want to put the money in and walk away. But this was something I want to do, I want to be involved. It's been money, it's been working on these. It's a tough project. It took a lot of energy and a lot of resource for my part. But I'm very happy that all these people that are (INAUDIBLE) are alive have come to and help me succeed, including all my friends, people who I've met on the street who have contributed a lot of money to these organizations, for us to see that change is happening in Africa. And we're seeing it a lot. We're going to need the money.

S. O'BRIEN: Talking like a true fundraiser. But I still need money from you before I go any further. We -- congratulations. September 2nd is the big date. It's very, very exciting. So you go from a guy who wanted to be a doctor to owning the whole hospital. That's all right. That's pretty good. Dikembe Mutombo, congratulations.

MUTOMBO: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Thank you for talking with us. It's our pleasure.

MUTOMBO: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: We're going to have business news right after this short break. We're back in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BUSINESS HEADLINES)

S. O'BRIEN: A look at the day's top stories is right after this short break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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