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CNN Live Saturday

Al Qaeda Documents Discovered in Operation Mountain Lion

Aired April 06, 2002 - 12:40   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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: In Afghanistan, Operation Mountain Lion wrapped up today. The week-long operation seeking Taliban and al Qaeda forces was staged in Paktia Province.

CNN's Ryan Chilcote went along with the troops on their mission, the only television correspondent to do so. Here's his exclusive report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The goal of Operation Mountain Lion was to search and destroy caves formerly used by al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: Bomb! Twenty -- about 20 meters.

CHILCOTE: Many of the caves in this part of eastern Afghanistan are vast, and hardly any of them have ever been mapped.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: Go back another 15 meters.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: Down a corridor.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: Goes out to another door. I can see light. There's another tunnel outside, about 20 meters down the road. Grappling.

CHILCOTE: Soldiers use grappling hooks and lighting from their M-16 assault rifles to locate booby traps and search for ammunitions and documents that the Taliban and al Qaeda might have left behind.

When they're done, the soldiers attempt to destroy the caves using C-4 explosives and one of the Army's newest anti-tank weapons, known as Small D.

(on-camera): Oh yeah.

(voice-over): But many of these caves are heavily reinforced and have survived bombing raids and the infantry could not carry enough ammunition to destroy them all.

The Army was in the area to check out recent intelligence that Taliban and al Qaeda forces may have slipped over the border into Pakistan, ready to come back at any time. But for now, Pakistan is off limits to any large-scale U.S. military action, so the Army is doing what can to investigate.

CAPT. PETER SHULL, 101st AIRBORNE, U.S. ARMY: We're close to the border here. Some people suspect maybe that the al Qaeda and Taliban are moving across the border. I don't know if that's true or not, but just in case, if they were moving back and forth, we wanted to come out here and check these caves to see if maybe they had cachets that they were leaving over here.

CHILCOTE: The troops did not find large amounts of munitions, but they did walk away with some documents. Some of the documents appeared to indicate that terrorist cells had at one time occupied the caves. The soldiers sorted the papers with words like "anti-aircraft" written on them from those that appeared to be of a religious nature. There was no contact with al Qaeda and Taliban forces during the mission; something that most of these soldiers said was unfortunate.

SHULL: We'll keep going until we find these guys. It's not over and it won't be over until we find them.

CHILCOTE: And so, the search continues.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: And that was an exclusive report by Ryan Chilcote.

And he joins us on the telephone to give us a better idea as to whether -- Ryan, if you can hear me, this is -- this operation is over, but is a scaled-down version still ongoing in the region?

CHILCOTE: No, that seems to be it in that region. They went through those cave. They decided that they had been, you know, sort of picked through and now, I think, that they're going to go through the intelligence that they collected there and then -- and draw their next set of plans.

WHITFIELD: When might you, if you're able to get this information, be privy to what kind of intelligence they may have garnered?

CHILCOTE: Well, you know, it's up to the experts at this point. I -- when I was out there, it was just quite amazing. They were going through these documents. They were in Arabic and of the 400 troops that were out there; there wasn't one Arabic reader. So all they could really do is guess whether something was of meaningful sort of military significance or not.

So it's up to the experts and there's no telling when they'll be getting back to us.

WHITFIELD: Did you kind of get the sense that they would try to grab as much as they could carry and just try to discern what it is later?

CHILCOTE: You know, it's really amazing because the fact is I was out the with the infantry and most soldiers were carrying as much as 120, 130 pounds on their backs. And they collected, in just this one cave that I witnessed, they collected several sacks of this information and, you know -- of these documents.

And they got to the point where they really had to decide what to take with them. And they sort of were sorting, you know, based on whether there was red and green in the materials that they were looking, which might indicate that it was a religious book, but the religious material -- from what might be of military significance because they simply couldn't carry it all back with them to the landing zone where they fly out.

WHITFIELD: All right, Ryan Chilcote, thanks very for joining us on the telephone and helping to elaborate on your exclusive report on the end of that Operation Mountain Lion.

And to help us get a grasp on what lies ahead after Operation Mountain Lion, we turn now to Retired Major General Don Shepperd, who is a CNN military analyst and he joins us now from Washington.

Good afternoon.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hello Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Well, it sounds more as though this is more an intelligence measure than it is a strictly -- strictly a military strategy. Yet, at the same time, they have to carry out an operation like this to make sure that that region is still safe for them as well, correct?

SHEPPERD: Yeah, they do, indeed. This is Paktia Province, the Wild West, if you will. It's next to the northwestern provinces in Pakistan, which are the tribal areas of Pakistan over which the government has had very loose control for many, many decades.

Now, the problem that we're running into is you have to go in and search these caves and you have to decide which ones to destroy because you can't destroy them all. It's very dangerous work. They're full of booby traps, but you've got to go in and do this. And it's just an example of the dangerous work that remains to be done in Afghanistan, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: So General, how you make that kind of determination?

SHEPPERD: Well, you do it through the intelligence you gather, from the documents that you capture, the people you talk to and emerging intelligence that comes from the people in the Pashtun areas. As you get more and more of them on your side, basically, they can tell us where to go. But you've got to go in there cave-by-cave and look, and again, decide what's in there, what's worth carrying out, and then, which ones you want to close down forever.

But this has been for, even for centuries, an area of smuggling back and forth, lots of places to hide and obviously the al Qaeda and the Taliban sympathizers are going back and forth from Pakistan into these area. So we're going to have to go in and clear them out, Fredricka. WHITFIELD: Well, General, let's talk a little bit about the floating operations just -- not far away from Afghanistan. There are two aircraft carriers and there are fleets in the nearby area. It's been reported this morning, in the "New York Times," that one of those aircraft carriers may be pulled out of the region at bit earlier than expected. What does it tell about the downsizing of the operation?

SHEPPERD: Well, it tells me basically that there's not a lot of need for a lot of tactical error that comes off of those ships. Now, some of it, of course, has been -- we've got A-10s in Bagram now, reportedly. And what the ships do is -- and the aircraft carriers, is supply tactical air power and there are just not many targets that you can use airstrikes against.

So you're seeing this winding down to small unit operations, but you're going to have these bounce-ups from time-to-time as we clear out the remaining pockets. We're going to be at this a long time, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, Retired Major General Don Shepperd. Thanks very much for joining us from Washington this afternoon.

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