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CNN Live Saturday

Donald Shepperd, Milt Bearden Discuss Operation Mountain Lion

Aired April 06, 2002 - 17:18   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: For more now on Operation Mountain Lion, we're joined by two guests from Washington, Major General Don Shepherd; he's a CNN military analyst and he served in the Air Force for nearly 40 years, and now runs his own defense consulting firm. And Milt Bearden is a former CIA officer who managed the agency's covert war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. And he's also the author of "The Black Tulip," a novel about war in Afghanistan. Thanks very much, gentlemen, for joining me.

Milt, I want to begin with you. This is as much a protective military measure as it was an intelligence operation. So operations such as this, Mountain Lion, how many more times over is an operation like this likely to take place over the next course of weeks or even months?

MILT BEARDEN, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Well, probably almost continually. What someone is going to have to do is to put some boots on the ground right in that area around Zawa-Kili, and I think that Tommy Franks has already indicated that we're in pretty close touch with the Pashtun militia commanders in those areas. And we're just going to have to be in charge of that piece of real estate, because people will float in and out of there as they have the last 20 years. This was among the most fiercely contested pieces of territory in the whole Afghan war when the Soviets were in there for 10 years.

WHITFIELD: And general, these sorts of intelligence searches are so vital in this ongoing war against terrorism, aren't they?

MAJ. GEN. DONALD SHEPPERD (RET)., CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, intelligence is always vital, Fredricka. On the other hand, I'm not sure we're getting a lot of real intelligence now, but you have to go back into these areas to see if any of them are really being used as places to stockpile weapons, being used continuously for operations. And there are thousands of these caves, not only in Paktia province, the ones we're looking at here, but also all over Afghanistan. So as Milt says, this is going to go on for a long time, almost continuously for as long as we're there.

WHITFIELD: And General, we saw in this exclusive report -- the pictures show these documents were some of the items that were retrieved. Because they were in Arabic, we're not quite sure exactly what to discern from those documents. But what might be the directive that these documents may offer? Might they help lead a trail to the people who left these areas? SHEPPERD: Yeah, again, although it's being conducted by military, this is much like police work. You put together a picture slowly over time. You might come across a telephone number, you might come across a name that fits into a larger picture, but all of this helps us tighten the noose, if you will, if that's appropriate, around al Qaeda worldwide. We're not after them just in Afghanistan, just in Pakistan, but worldwide. So it all fits into part of that picture, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Milt, there had been some earlier reports that possibly an awful lot of the al Qaeda and Taliban members may have gone across the border to Pakistan. This kind of information retrieved, do they count, do military intelligence officials count solely on information like this in order to give them reason to cross the border?

BEARDEN: They're going to have to deal with the people in the region there, the people in Paktia province and the around the Khowst area, who are among some of the toughest in all of Afghanistan. Some of the documents they're getting, they look like they had some Korans there. And don't forget that everything that looks like Arabic isn't Arabic. That could be the same script used for either of the two main languages used in Afghanistan.

So you're talking about one big tribal group along a belt on either side of what they call zero line in between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pashtuns. And these people can move back and forth across there.

I don't know that we can say we're up against Taliban or al Qaeda necessarily. There are some pretty tough Afghans that live in that area that are neither that we have to deal with. If we're not making friends with them, we're going to have either the best friends or the worst enemies we've ever had.

WHITFIELD: All right. Milt Bearden and General Don Shepperd, thanks very much for joining us. Appreciate it.

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