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CNN Live Saturday

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in U.S. Custody

Aired March 01, 2003 - 17:51   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: A senior White House official has told CNN this was a CIA-led operation, with the FBI and Pakistani police making the actual arrest.
What we are talking about here, let's catch you up a little bit, we're talking about the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the No. 3 man in the al Qaeda network, the military commander. One of Osama bin Laden's right-hand people arrested just outside the Pakistani capital. And CNN's Mike Brooks, who is our law enforcement expert, is here to join us to talk a little bit about, well, where is he going? Is he coming to the United States? He's now not coming to the United States? And a lot of the reasons why.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a possibility, Carol, that he may not come back to the United States at all. I was discussing this with a senior law enforcement official here in the United States just a short time ago. And we were talking about why he may not be brought back here and the reason why.

Well, the reason, if he's brought back here to the United States, if he's renditioned -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bring him back to the United States, like they have done with other terrorists, Mir Amal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef, then he's going to be put into the criminal justice system. He lawyers up, if you will, and then they have no opportunity to really question him.

Now, if you take the other side, where he's treated as an enemy combatant, that right now, the government thinks that overrides and outweighs the reason -- the need for a criminal conviction, because of all the information that he has. They are going back to 1995 with the Manila air case...

LIN: The plot to harm U.S. airliners.

BROOKS: Absolutely, exactly. They called it the Manila air case. He had links to the World Trade Center bombing, World Trade Center I, as they call it, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-as-Salaam, Tanzania. And right now, with war looming in Iraq, there are force protection issues. DOD has a big need to try to find out any information, any intelligence information they can gather from him about any pending attacks, any further pending terrorist attacks either abroad against U.S. interests or here in the United States.

LIN: How likely is it that he's going to talk?

BROOKS: There's a possibility he may.

LIN: What's in it for him?

BROOKS: Exactly. What's in it for him? Not much at all. But he may talk. He may not talk. A lot of times, just some of the information they have, at least they can start talking to him, asking him certain pointed questions. And then from the information that they've received from other intelligence sources and from other people at Guantanamo Bay, some of the detainees there, they can take that and match it up to see if any of the pieces of this big puzzle start to come together.

LIN: What sort of interrogation techniques do you think that the FBI or the CIA are going to use? Or do you think they're going to turn him over to a third party such as, say, Jordan, which actually uses torture?

BROOKS: I would doubt that they would turn him over to a third party such as Jordan or any other country. There's a lot of different methods that I really can't talk too much about, such as sleep deprivation, other means to try to get information, and other techniques that have been talked about in the past. But with someone of this level and there's a lot of different ways they can go about it. But right now it remains to be seen.

LIN: I have heard one of the techniques is, you know, he's being moved around and he doesn't even know where he's going. And it's more the theater of the imagination in his mind, am I in Jordan? Am I in Israel?

BROOKS: Where am i?

LIN: Where am I? And what does that mean to me? And what does that mean in terms of how they're going to treat me? To raise more questions in the subject's mind, to make him a little bit nervous about what might happen to him.

BROOKS: He'll probably be treated as someone who has a lot of information. So you know, if you treat someone poorly, they're not going to give you any information at all. You get into the good cop/bad cop, kind of thing, that people see in the movies. A lot of people watch movies and they think...

LIN: Or they tell you what they think you want to hear, not necessarily the truth.

BROOKS: And we saw this just recently with the threat level going to orange. Some of the information that was not vetted well enough before they decided to change that by some of the people who knew how to push the buttons of law enforcement and intelligence officials in the United States. We saw it just recently. And we saw it back again with some of the other threats that they've come out with.

LIN: Right. All right.

BROOKS: So we'll see. It should be an interesting week.

LIN: And we'll know more in the coming days. Thank you very much, Mike Brooks.

BROOKS: Thank you, Carol.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired March 1, 2003 - 17:51   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A senior White House official has told CNN this was a CIA-led operation, with the FBI and Pakistani police making the actual arrest.
What we are talking about here, let's catch you up a little bit, we're talking about the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the No. 3 man in the al Qaeda network, the military commander. One of Osama bin Laden's right-hand people arrested just outside the Pakistani capital. And CNN's Mike Brooks, who is our law enforcement expert, is here to join us to talk a little bit about, well, where is he going? Is he coming to the United States? He's now not coming to the United States? And a lot of the reasons why.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a possibility, Carol, that he may not come back to the United States at all. I was discussing this with a senior law enforcement official here in the United States just a short time ago. And we were talking about why he may not be brought back here and the reason why.

Well, the reason, if he's brought back here to the United States, if he's renditioned -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bring him back to the United States, like they have done with other terrorists, Mir Amal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef, then he's going to be put into the criminal justice system. He lawyers up, if you will, and then they have no opportunity to really question him.

Now, if you take the other side, where he's treated as an enemy combatant, that right now, the government thinks that overrides and outweighs the reason -- the need for a criminal conviction, because of all the information that he has. They are going back to 1995 with the Manila air case...

LIN: The plot to harm U.S. airliners.

BROOKS: Absolutely, exactly. They called it the Manila air case. He had links to the World Trade Center bombing, World Trade Center I, as they call it, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-as-Salaam, Tanzania. And right now, with war looming in Iraq, there are force protection issues. DOD has a big need to try to find out any information, any intelligence information they can gather from him about any pending attacks, any further pending terrorist attacks either abroad against U.S. interests or here in the United States.

LIN: How likely is it that he's going to talk?

BROOKS: There's a possibility he may.

LIN: What's in it for him?

BROOKS: Exactly. What's in it for him? Not much at all. But he may talk. He may not talk. A lot of times, just some of the information they have, at least they can start talking to him, asking him certain pointed questions. And then from the information that they've received from other intelligence sources and from other people at Guantanamo Bay, some of the detainees there, they can take that and match it up to see if any of the pieces of this big puzzle start to come together.

LIN: What sort of interrogation techniques do you think that the FBI or the CIA are going to use? Or do you think they're going to turn him over to a third party such as, say, Jordan, which actually uses torture?

BROOKS: I would doubt that they would turn him over to a third party such as Jordan or any other country. There's a lot of different methods that I really can't talk too much about, such as sleep deprivation, other means to try to get information, and other techniques that have been talked about in the past. But with someone of this level and there's a lot of different ways they can go about it. But right now it remains to be seen.

LIN: I have heard one of the techniques is, you know, he's being moved around and he doesn't even know where he's going. And it's more the theater of the imagination in his mind, am I in Jordan? Am I in Israel?

BROOKS: Where am i?

LIN: Where am I? And what does that mean to me? And what does that mean in terms of how they're going to treat me? To raise more questions in the subject's mind, to make him a little bit nervous about what might happen to him.

BROOKS: He'll probably be treated as someone who has a lot of information. So you know, if you treat someone poorly, they're not going to give you any information at all. You get into the good cop/bad cop, kind of thing, that people see in the movies. A lot of people watch movies and they think...

LIN: Or they tell you what they think you want to hear, not necessarily the truth.

BROOKS: And we saw this just recently with the threat level going to orange. Some of the information that was not vetted well enough before they decided to change that by some of the people who knew how to push the buttons of law enforcement and intelligence officials in the United States. We saw it just recently. And we saw it back again with some of the other threats that they've come out with.

LIN: Right. All right.

BROOKS: So we'll see. It should be an interesting week.

LIN: And we'll know more in the coming days. Thank you very much, Mike Brooks.

BROOKS: Thank you, Carol.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com