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CNN Live Saturday

What Is Next in the Search for bin Laden?

Aired December 22, 2001 - 18:21   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.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to move on now to the situation going on in Afghanistan -- a fresh start there for an interim government. After two decades of occupying armies, civil war, and the terror of the Taliban, a new U.S.-set government took power today in Kabul and CNN's John Vause was on hand in the capital when the new era began.

We obviously have a problem with that report. We will bring it to you when it becomes available. We're going to go now to General Wesley Clark who's standing by in Little Rock to give us a perspective on where we are in this U.S.-led war. General, are you there?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I am.

CALLAWAY: Give us some perspective now on where we are in the search for Osama bin Laden. A lot has been said today about where we are in that. In fact, we heard from the President of Pakistan Musharraf that he believes Osama bin Laden is indeed dead, perhaps somewhere in one of the bombed-out caves. What are your thoughts on that?

CLARK: Well I think that's a reasonable thing to assume at this point. We have -- don't have apparently any information to the contrary. On the other hand, it's unlikely that Osama bin Laden would be broadcasting his presence this soon if he's in the process of trying to get out and make the arrangements.

So I think we're at a very favorable position actually. I -- we're going to have to go through this area of Tora Bora. We're going to have to look at the caves. General Franks has been presenting plans to do that. Hopefully, all of the forces required will be put over there very soon. It's a very important part of the operation to go and get the intelligence and exploit this information to make sure we really have eliminated the al Qaeda network, not only in Afghanistan, but elsewhere and to make sure that that base area is denied for any future terrorists who may -- who may have ideas that they could come back and reoccupy it after the United States' attention is diverted elsewhere.

CALLAWAY: But General, what the U.S. wanted to avoid, having to have Marines on the ground, going cave-by-cave searching for Osama bin Laden.

CLARK: Well, there are other outcomes that you can imagine, it would certainly have been better, and I agree with that. But on the other hand, the resistance has been broken. The Taliban regime is out. A new regime's in there, and it's necessary to go ahead and finish this action. There's no organized resistance, at least, that we know of in the Tora Bora area.

So that the concerns about putting a large number of troops on the ground and getting them bogged down in Afghanistan and so forth, they have to be put into perspective because this is really the mop-up operation. This is the follow-up, but if we learned one thing out of Desert Storm it should be that this part of the operation is vitally important. We've got to follow through and really complete the activities there. And I think ...

CALLAWAY: Yes.

CLARK: ... that's what the administration is thinking.

CALLAWAY: I was going to ask you if President Bush learned something from his father and not finishing something that he started.

CLARK: I think -- I think that's very clear that that's something we've all learned from watching the experience when you've got the enemy on the run and you break him like this -- then you've got to go ahead and finish the job, and in that case, as we've seen these thousands and hundreds of thousands rounds of explosives and ammunition and other things being taken out of those caves, that base area has to be -- has to be completely disestablished so no one else could come back and occupy it in the future and pose a threat either to the government there or to the United States and our allies abroad.

CALLAWAY: You have to -- you have to ask, though, isn't there a possibility that the U.S. military knows that bin Laden is dead and is not saying so.

CLARK: There's always the possibility that information is held that hasn't been revealed. But in this case, I would think that we'd be wanting to share such information once we could actually demonstrate it. It's possible we've got indications he's not -- he's dead, but we haven't really got the proof yet. I don't think we'd want to make a mistake on something like this. But if we do have conclusive proof, then I would think it would be very much in the interest of the United States to put that evidence out there and show the world that it was over -- at least as far as Osama bin Laden himself was concerned.

CALLAWAY: Mullah Omar, we haven't heard much about him in the -- in the last week or so. Certainly that has to still be a priority of the U.S. military to find what -- who could have been the brains behind the events of September 11th.

CLARK: I think that's right and Mullah Omar is somewhere everybody says in Afghanistan. We know that there is still Taliban supporters out there. Some of them are organized. Some of them are armed, and they're in some areas reportedly still under Taliban -- actually under Taliban control inside Afghanistan. So perhaps he's there and as long as he's there and until all of the high members of that government have been detained, interrogated and one way or another, the threat has been reduced, we have to be concerned about Mullah Omar as well.

CALLAWAY: And General, are we going to see a shift here, not as much a military action in Afghanistan, as more of an intelligence action as this continues and Osama bin Laden remains missing as Mullah Omar does as well?

CLARK: I think that's exactly right. I think we are going to see a lot more emphasis on intelligence operations, not only in Afghanistan, but elsewhere. But as long as there are heavily-armed groups in Afghanistan, as long as there's no central authority and everybody else disarmed, it's always going to be a very dangerous place for outside forces to operate, and we're going to probably want to have some military capability that can take action in there to detain certain individuals if necessary.

CALLAWAY: General Wesley Clark, thanks once again for your insights this half-hour.

CLARK: Thank you.

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