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America's New War: Taliban Likely to Have Information Regarding Osama bin Laden
Aired September 24, 2001 - 07:16 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Right now we are going to check in with Sandy Berger, who served in the Clinton administration and has some very good insights as to what this current administration is planning to do. He, of course, was national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
Good to have you with us, sir. Thanks for joining us.
SAMUEL BERGER, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: You, no doubt, have heard the reports the Taliban is claiming it does not know where Osama bin Laden is this morning. The U.S. administration says they believe that he is still in Afghanistan. What do you think?
BERGER: Well, I think the Taliban is likely to have information on his whereabouts and various places in which he has places to hide. I think maximum pressure has to be maintained on that and as the administration officials have said over the weekend, we have no reason to believe he's not in Afghanistan.
ZAHN: How much help do you think the U.S. gets from the opposition in northern Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance?
BERGER: Well, obviously those who operate in Afghanistan and are front line states, as you just outlined on the map, are able to function inside Afghanistan with a great deal more stealth and effectiveness than we can. And so I think we want to make common cause with them. The enemy of our enemy is our friend under these circumstances and I suspect we'll maximize our opportunity to work with those groups.
ZAHN: What do you make of the reports coming this morning from the Taliban that they are mobilizing hundreds of thousands of men to ward off an attack by the United States and its allies?
BERGER: Well, I, there's no question that the Taliban regime itself will resist any military effort. But I would point out that the Afghan people themselves are the first victims of the Taliban regime. They have, they're a pathetic people. Perhaps five million on the verge of starvation as a result of the brutal regime of the Afghan people. So while the Taliban regime itself clearly will fight and resist, I think if we are focused on the perpetrators and those who support them and not on the Afghan people themselves, we will have, I think, some support inside Afghanistan.
ZAHN: But isn't that one of the greatest difficulties of this mission, to convince Afghans that this is not an attack on Afghanistan and on Islam?
BERGER: Well, certainly it is, and I think that the president has made clear that we will act here in a strategic way, in a targeted way and not in an indiscriminate way. And I think it's extremely important that be the case because we not only have to continue to justify this to the international community to maintain the support we need, we obviously do not want to appear that we're just engaged in a wholesale attack on the Afghan people.
ZAHN: There has been a lot of analysis over the last couple of days which nations ultimately will line up along with the United States. Based on your understanding of what's going on with Saudi Arabia, are they in or out?
BERGER: Oh, I think the Saudis will cooperate and have been cooperating quite actively. Don't forget bin Laden's first target was Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabian regime, the Saudi Arabian government. I think we have to recognize that different countries will be more vocal and visible than others. What we need are specific concrete assistance from countries, different in different circumstances. In the case of the Saudis, we'll need, obviously, intelligence. We'll need help with breaking up the financial networks. We'll obviously need some military assistance.
But I don't think we need to put them on a soap box or to ask that they wave American flags. What's most important here is what they do and we have to recognize that in some ways the more they -- the less they say the more they can do.
ZAHN: I had a conversation with former President Clinton yesterday and he talked about the efforts during your administration to isolate Osama bin Laden and support President Bush as his administration goes after him. Why weren't you guys able to isolate him?
BERGER: Well, we had some successes and some opportunities that didn't materialize. We were able to, working with other intelligence services, break up attacks on the United Nations, on the Holland Tunnel, another attack on the Los Angeles airport, an attack in Amman, Jordan, an effort to assassinate the pope, another effort to blow up airplanes from the Philippines. We were able to arrest a number of bin Laden operatives and to take down a number of cells.
We attacked a meeting in 1998 where we had intelligence to believe that bin Laden and his operatives were there. We probably killed 20 or 30. Unfortunately bin Laden had left. And later in 2000 we were very aggressive in trying to monitor his whereabouts. But we never had the kind of predictive intelligence that enabled us to have high confidence during this period that if we struck him we would succeed and obviously striking and failing would be counterproductive.
ZAHN: All right, you said you didn't have the predictive intelligence. Do you think the Bush administration does?
BERGER: Well, I think that we now have assets that we never had before by virtue of the horrible events of September 11. We now have cooperation from the Pakistanis, cooperation from other front line states that were mentioned earlier. We now have cooperation from those inside and outside of Afghanistan who can, I think, provide us with more information and more intelligence, and I have no question that over time -- this is not just bin Laden. This is bin Laden's operatives. This is people operating in Europe and people operating in the Gulf and we now know people operating in the United States.
And so brick by brick, piece by piece, I believe we will disassemble this organization.
ZAHN: Sandy Berger. As always, good to have you with us here on CNN.
BERGER: Thank you, Paula.
ZAHN: Appreciate your time this morning.
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