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CNN Live At Daybreak
Target: Terrorism - U.S. Intelligence
Aired October 01, 2001 - 07:07 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: President Bush is expected to appoint a new deputy national security adviser to handle counter-terrorism, that is. The September 11 attacks have raised questions about the level of U.S. intelligence gathering and the performance of the CIA.
Joining us now from Washington is former CIA director Stansfield Turner. Good to have you with us, sir. Welcome.
STANSFIELD TURNER, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: Good morning.
So how do you think the CIA failed America?
TURNER: Well, getting intelligence against terrorists is one of the toughest jobs we've got. I think in this case the problem lies in a lack of coordination. We're now finding out by one means or another that there were a lot of little clues out there. A man trying to take flying lessons without wanting to learn how to land or takeoff. A long time ago, two or three years ago, a report from the Philippines about an attack of this very sort that happened on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
And I think the big problem is that those clues did all not come together. They weren't collated and brought into one focus.
ZAHN: Why is that?
TURNER: Because the director of Central Intelligence, who is also the head of the CIA, but a separate job called the Director of Central Intelligence, does not have the authority to command the entire intelligence apparatus of our country. He needs more authority so that people don't hold out little pieces of intelligence here and little pieces of intelligence there. They've got to be brought together in one place.
ZAHN: Do you have any confidence that will happen now, particularly when there is debate about how much power to give Governor Ridge as he takes over the homeland security post?
TURNER: I think it is so obvious that our intelligence apparatus today has got to be pointed towards this major threat of terrorism and not towards a military threat. And today the intelligence apparatus is dominated by the Defense Department. And we can see so clearly that it's not a defense orientation we need for intelligence today, that I hope people are going to recognize the need for a leader of intelligence from a national, from a political standpoint, not from a military standpoint.
ZAHN: You just described some of the things you thought the CIA missed simply through how the chain of command is set up. But it became public very recently that for the last three years the CIA has had people in northern Afghanistan working with the then alive opposition leader Massoud to either try to capture Osama bin Laden or kill him.
Were those efforts misplaced?
TURNER: No, I think those were very good efforts and I think that shows that there was a real attempt here and they recognized that there was a problem. But they just didn't get it all together.
In addition to having a central point within the United States for this intelligence, we need now, and I think the administration seems to be doing this, to promote an international intelligence clearinghouse. Maybe some of that information we got in Afghanistan wasn't properly brought together with information the Pakistanis had or the Uzbeks had or our European allies might have had.
So we've got to now encourage a universal intelligence sharing across the board.
ZAHN: Do you think the CIA made a mistake by spending some $3 billion in encouraging Islamic fundamentalists to come to Afghanistan? Is that part of the problem, too?
TURNER: Well, I was part of that so you've got a prejudiced person here, I'm afraid. And I think that at that time our objective was to keep the Soviets from consolidating their position in Afghanistan and we did that because the Afghan insurgents, in time, pushed the Soviets out.
So when you look back on it now, while we didn't directly support the Taliban, but some of the money we put in through Pakistan undoubtedly ended up in their hands. The alternative would be having the Soviets today, the Russians in charge in Afghanistan.
ZAHN: But as you look back on that as honestly as you can, do you think that was the fundamental problem, that Pakistan had too much control over where that money went?
TURNER: Well, you have to put yourself in our shoes back then in 1979. What option did we have? If we wanted to support the insurgents, it had to go through Pakistan. We had no other way of getting the materials in there. And as I say, at that time the primary objective of this country was to slow down the advance of the Soviet Union.
ZAHN: One last quick question for you, sir.
TURNER: Yes? ZAHN: What do you think is going to happen with Osama bin Laden?
TURNER: Well, I think that we'll go track him down. Whether we could ever get enough intelligence to actually find him, kill him or capture him, I think is highly unlikely. But it's not possible for you or me on the outside here to know just how good our sources on the ground there are.
If we don't actually capture him, what I hope we will do is drive him to such extremes to keep himself safe that his effectiveness as a terrorist leader will be much diminished.
ZAHN: Stansfield Turner, good to have you with us this morning. Thank you for your candor. We appreciate it.
TURNER: Thank you.
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