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CNN Live Saturday

U.S. Troops Wrap Up Search and Destroy Mission

Aired April 06, 2002 - 22:25   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: In the eastern hills of Afghanistan, U.S. forces wrap up a search and destroy mission designed to clear away the last remnants of al Qaeda.

And CNN had an exclusive look inside that six day operation. Out point man on the story, CNN's Ryan Chilcote. He's joining us now live for more on this.

And Ryan, I want to tell everyone that you were not only the reporter in this story, you were the photographer. You were the one going inside these caves, alongside the U.S. troops out there. Had to be a frightening experience.

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was indeed a bit of a frightening experience. These troops could not know exactly what or who was waiting for them in side the caves. The intelligence they had going into the operation was that the area was free of al Qaeda and Taliban forces. But obviously, they don't really know until they go inside.

Likewise, they don't know. They couldn't have known whether there were any booby traps inside those caves. But those troops are now out of harm's way. And the families of those some 400 troops from the 101st Airborne can rest assured that they're back at a U.S. base and out of harm's way.

I was along for that ride. And there's that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHILCOTE (voice-over): The goal of Operation Mountain Lion was to search and destroy caves, formerly used by al Qaeda and Taliban forces. Many of the caves in this part of eastern Afghanistan are vast. And hardly any of them have ever been mapped.

Soldiers use grappling hooks and lighting from their M-16 assault rifles to locate booby traps and search for munitions and documents the Taliban and al Qaeda might've 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.

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 it can to investigate.

PETER SCHULT, CAPTAIN, 101ST AIRBORNE, U.S. ARMY: We're pretty close to the border here. Some people suspect maybe that the al Qaeda and Taliban are moving across the border. Don't know if that's true or not, but just in case, they were moving back and forth. We wanted to come out here to check these caves, see if maybe they had some caches 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 appear to indicate that terrorist cells had at one time occupied the caves. The soldiers sorted the papers with words like "anti-aircraft" written 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.

SCHULT: And we'll keep going until we find these guys. It's not over. It won't be over until we find them.

CHILCOTE: And so the search continues.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHILCOTE: Operation Mountain Lion comes just about two weeks after the U.S.'s last large scale operation. That was Operation Anaconda, just a little bit more than two weeks before. So right now, unfortunately, the U.S. army here is saying for them, those al Qaeda and Taliban pockets are really rather small. And it's difficult for them to engage them.

So this mission was actually very indicative of what the U.S. army is engaged in right now, gathering intelligence and waiting for those al Qaeda and Taliban pockets to gather in large numbers. Back to you, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: Ryan, those troops expressing disappointment to you over not encountering any Taliban or al Qaeda members?

CHILCOTE: Yes, a lot of them said that, you know, privately said they would really have liked an opportunity, as they put it, to bump into a small pocket of Taliban or al Qaeda fighters. These are guys are obviously trained to fight. And that was the real excitement that some of them weren't on Operation Anaconda. And they sort of wanted their piece of the action, if you will.

Catherine?

CALLAWAY: All right. Ryan Chilcote, thank you very much for that exclusive report. Incredible story. And thank you for bringing it to us. Dangerous job for you out there. You did a wonderful job at it. Thank you, Brian.

Well, U.S. forces remain a powerful presence in the war-torn Afghanistan. And joining us now to take a closer look at Operation Mountain Lion, CNN military analyst General Don Shepperd is joining us. Also, Eric Margolis. He's the author of "War at the Top of the World."

Thank you both for being with us. General, I want to start with you. After we just saw Ryan's report, another empty cave, more documents found. You have to wonder, you know, will this continue and why will it continue?

DON SHEPPERD, GENERAL (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: They're going to continue, Catherine. And great reporting by Ryan and his camera crew there. Dangerous work. You've got to go into these caves. And they're not just caves. They're basically bunkers that have been fortified, perhaps built on caves and tunnel complexes. They've been there for a couple of decades. So you got to go in and find what's left in the way of intelligence. You're probably not going to find much, but you may find some link to something somewhere around the world, that will lead you to somebody else or a terrorist cell, if you will.

So you've got to do it. And also, the ones that can be reused again, you want to blow as many of them up as possible. So that's what this is about. And we're going to be at it a long time.

CALLAWAY: More of these cave operations in the future then?

SHEPPERD: Absolutely. Small pockets of people occasionally here and there. They don't make great targets. We're sending in large numbers of soldiers. So we're going to be into the area search and going into a lot of these caves and a lot of places.

CALLAWAY: Eric, to you know. I know you've been in contact with Pakistani intelligence. You've actually met Osama bin Laden back in 1992 when he was just a freedom fighter. You have a good perspective on what -- how these groups actually operate. How much can the troops learn from going inside these caves?

ERIC MARGOLIS, AUTHOR: They've stumbled on an intelligence bonanza, but it doesn't look like they did today. In fact, I'm infused with a sense of deja-vu because I enlisted in the U.S. army during the Vietnam War. When I hear the word "search and destroy" and our American soldiers going to through tunnels and caves with flashlights, brings back very bad memories for me of a futile guerrilla war that we could never win.

And what we've done today is we're spending $33 million a day on this operation is pursuing one of these very difficult guerrilla wars. We have an elusive enemy, small in number. They obviously are not going to let themselves be pinned down again by the Americans. There's thousands of these tunnels. I've been in some of them in that region.

And in fact, Osama bin Laden helped build some of them with his engineering units, paid for with American money.

CALLAWAY: You know, let me ask you this, general. And then, Eric, I want you to respond. You know, are they looking in the wrong place here? Certainly, these troops know they're being looked for. And Pakistan is right there. There's certainly got to be caves in that location. Are we looking in the wrong place?

SHEPPERD: We're not looking in the wrong place, Catherine. This is the Pashtun area. And it's Pashtun on both sides of the border. There's no fence there, no mark on the ground. It's even been called Pashtunistan by some.

Basically, there's a big difference though between this and Vietnam. And that is, we don't have a large footprint on the ground that provides targets for them to attack. All the difference in the world of what's going on. We're not bogged down in a guerrilla war, although we are going against targets in the tunnel complexes, like we did somewhat in Vietnam.

CALLAWAY: Eric, any response to that? Not being able to go inside Pakistan?

MARGOLIS: Well, the -- I think most of the al Qaeda and Taliban people have just blended into the civilian population and the tribal territories of Pakistan. You know, the border is -- was drawn by the British colonialists. Nobody recognizes it in the region or the people gone up into the northern mountains.

So there are very few really good targets presented. And I still maintain that the numbers of al Qaeda were exaggerated from the beginning. Most of the Taliban are just local Pashtun tribes. They're waiting now for a chance to start fighting again or until they're sufficiently aggravated by the American presence to start a low level guerrilla warfare.

CALLAWAY: Are we any closer -- are we seeing the troops any closer to finding out where Osama bin Laden is, general?

SHEPPERD: Hard to say, because we don't know where he is. And we don't whether he's dead or alive. That's the official reports. And that's all the information that I can get. Now clearly we're trying to take the focus off him as a government policy. On the other hand, it'd be great if we could get him, but the harsh fact is we don't know where he is.

I feel confident that we will initially get him, but it may not be in Afghanistan, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: And I'm sorry, a producer was talking in my ear. General, I apologize for that.

Eric, can you respond?

MARGOLIS: Yes, we may have entered -- I think the U.S. will eventually capture, kill Osama bin Laden. But the U.S. is going to fall into the trap that bin Laden set. He set on numerous occasions he wanted to draw the U.S. into a long term guerrilla war or a series of them. And every day, it seems the U.S. is getting a step deeper into Afghanistan. Even the king of Afghanistan, who the U.S. is about to return to the throne, described the war in the most negative terms, urged the U.S. to get out as possible, before it gets sucked into Afghan tribal politics.

CALLAWAY: Eric Margolis and General Don Shepperd, thank you both for being us on this busy Saturday night. Lots of news going on this evening. Thanks for being with us.

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