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CNN Live Saturday
Osama bin Laden's Voice Heard on Radio in Tora Bora
Aired December 15, 2001 - 18:02 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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's start with the intriguing possibility. U.S. troops have been listening on Osama bin Laden's radio conversation -- at least they think it's Osama bin Laden. Well, today U.S. officials said they have analyzed one voice and compared it to other bin Laden recordings. And they're reasonably certain the speaker is none other than the man himself. Troops intercepted the radio conversations in the mountains of Tora Bora, and that is where fierce U.S. bombing has been under way for over two weeks.
If bin Laden is in Tora Bora, U.S. officials say he is likely trapped and unable to get new supplies of food, water and ammunition. Opposition troops aided by U.S. Special Forces have al Qaeda fighters contained in two valleys. Any possible escape route to Pakistan is supposedly blocked by thousands of Pakistani troops. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveling to Central Asia looked ahead.
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DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: If we gain control over him, we then would probably move into a secure location, and there would be a process of interrogation, as there has been with everybody else that's been collected.
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LIN: Right now, let's talk to our CNN military analyst, retired General Wesley Clark about those battlefield radio calls. He joins us this evening from Little Rock. Good evening again, general.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Evening, Carol.
LIN: I know we talked about this a couple of hours ago, but let's bring our audience right now up to date. Do you think that this radio transmission U.S. officials are talking about is actually Osama bin Laden?
CLARK: Well I think they're -- they've been very cautious in raising expectations. So if they're saying it is, I think they've got good evidence that it is.
LIN: So when you take a look at the situation now, al Qaeda fighters allegedly trapped in two valleys. Bin Laden now talking directly to his troops over this short-range radio. How long do you think it's going to take before the fighters are captured and even bin Laden himself?
CLARK: Well it sounds promising. There is speculation, of course, that maybe these radio calls were prerecorded or broadcast in from somewhere else, or maybe it's not bin Laden, but assuming that he's there, and assuming that the Pakistanis are on the border the way that they've said they are and really blocking this thing off -- then, it's a matter of days, maybe before we close the noose there.
It's going to be done by our troops and by the Afghan troops moving forward slowly, drawing fire, reconning the enemy's position, overwatched perhaps by snipers and then using the enemy's fire to draw bombs in on him and put our fire power in on top of him, and then move forward again step by step.
LIN: Well when you take a look at the map though, between Afghanistan and Pakistan, we keep saying porous border. It is such an open area and bin Laden knows the smuggling routes. What are the chances that he's going to escape?
CLARK: Hard to say, but it's -- I think we'd be making a mistake to say that we've got that border sealed. We can try all we want, but it's -- you've got to keep your hope down at this point. Certainly we're going to try to knock him out. Certainly we're going to try to keep him in, but the odds are that a small party can get through 20 percent, 40 percent. Who knows? But we haven't heard any report from the Pakistanis that they've actually detained anyone who's trying that we've seen new reports -- that some have tried to escape and get through that border. So maybe they made it.
LIN: And an interesting dynamic that we're watching on the ground. Here you have air support by the most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. military with their airstrikes combined with Afghan opposition fighters on the ground. And this is a relationship -- I don't know, I've never seen this relationship before where you had U.S. military forces directly aiding local commanders in a country in a war. Have you?
CLARK: Well of course, this was part of what we did in Vietnam with the Vietnamese -- South Vietnamese Army back in the 1960s and early 1970s. And our Green Berets are trained to do this very thing and we've always had this capability. We practice it around the world and this is what they're good at.
In the Kosovo campaign, of course, we had forces on the ground there. The KLA -- the Kosovo Liberation Army, but they wanted ours, and we weren't aligned with them and we were very careful there not to, as Secretary Cohen put it, "be the KLA's air force." So we deliberately didn't do this. But here we see the effectiveness of this tactic.
LIN: What are some of the complexities of that relationship? I mean there was a terrific article in today's "New York Times" about Hamid Karzai, the Afghan Pashtun leader, who's now going to be the leader of this -- of Afghanistan's new coalition government. But how when he was making his way in negotiating with Taliban fighters, that he had direct assistance -- he was never alone without U.S. Special Forces accompanying him.
And that during that B-52 errant bombing, that a U.S. commander actually, you know, body blocked Hamid Karzai to protect him from any sort of danger because he was so valuable to the political future of Afghanistan. What are the dangers, though, in that close of relationship. How do you know, even though you need these Afghan fighters on the ground, that you can ultimately trust them?
CLARK: Well you don't and of course, trust is the key factor here Carol, because they have to trust us. They have to ask what are our motives and how reliable are we and if our lives are really in danger, are we going to stick with them or are we going to run out and save ourselves. And we're asking the same thing -- how reliable are they? Can we trust them?
It is about trust, and it's not only about the immediate trust, but it's also about long-term intent and motive. One of the things that was most impressive to me in the article was one of the -- one of the Afghans had said we keep asking the Americans why are you here, and they tell us to help us. And that's one of the most remarkable things about the job the Special Forces have done, is they've built the bonds of trust in there with people of a different culture, different heritage, different country -- they've never known them before; never worked with them before like this and yet those bonds are obviously very tight. They're life and death bonds.
LIN: So doesn't that create a dynamic, though, that there -- it creates a dynamic where the U.S. military then is obligated to stay in a situation that perhaps the Bush administration may want to withdraw them as soon as possible.
CLARK: Well I think there's -- it's clear that the U.S. military will have a lot of influence in there for a long time, and there will certainly be a temptation to keep the forces in there and exert that influence. It also raises another dilemma because what if the Afghan fighters themselves commit acts that aren't in keeping the laws of war and would -- something we wouldn't permit, and what do our people on the ground do -- are they there?
Did they see it? Do they turn their backs? Do they try to stop it? And how does that impact on the relationship? So yes, there are -- there are real dilemmas when you're involved in this close of a personal relationship. But I think that the horror of what happened on the 11th of September and the need to strike back certainly justifies taking those risks and I think our troops have done extremely well in this case.
LIN: All right, so far so good. General Wesley Clark, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for joining us today.
CLARK: Thank you, Carol.
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