Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

War Makes Strange Bedfellows: Iran Helps U.S. Efforts

Aired October 31, 2001 - 06:16   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: War, like politics, sometimes makes for strange bedfellows. It's happened in past wars, and in the tenuous U.S.-led coalition against terror, it is happening once again.

Here is CNN national security correspondent David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first blush, you might think the U.S. would not get any help against terrorism from Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, from Moammar Gadhafi's Libya, or from Bashar al-Assad in Syria, or Sudan's Omar al- Bashir.

RICHARD PERLE, PENTAGON DEFENSE POLICY BOARD: And I think we ought to be very wary in general of associating with miserable, rotten regimes.

ENSOR: But Iran is helping some. Iranian officials have promised that if any American pilots, flying operations over neighboring Afghanistan should come down in their country, Iran will conduct search-and-rescue missions. It is also allowing the U.S. to unload tens of thousands of tons of wheat at Iranian ports to be trucked through Iran to Afghan refugees. After all, Iran and the Afghan Taliban government have been at loggerheads for years.

PROF. MAHMOOD SARIDGHALAM, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, TEHRAN: There are people in Iran who believe that there is such a convenient way of cooperating between the two countries, because they have common enemies.

ENSOR: Earlier this month, a senior CIA official secretly traveled to Damascus to seek help from Syrian intelligence officials against Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Earlier on, U.S. officials met in London, with the chief of Libyan intelligence for the same reason.

And U.S. officials confirmed FBI officials have been in Sudan, where bin Laden lived in the first half of the 90s, invited there by the Khartoum government, says its ambassador, to question anyone they like.

KHIDIR AHMED, SUDANESE AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: I would like to assure you that your people are there. Your people from the intelligence community are there right now, have been talking to the people.

ENSOR: In fact, back in 1996, the Sudanese say, they even offered to turn bin Laden, himself, over to the U.S. or Saudi Arabia.

PERLE: Now, the Sudanese offered to extradite bin Laden to the United States, and in what may have been one of the most breathtaking failures of policy in modern times, we turned it down.

ENSOR: Clinton administration officials say they were not convinced the Sudanese offer was genuine, and in any case, back in 1996, it was not clear that bin Laden could have been convicted of anything in a U.S. court of law.

JAMES STEINBERG, FORMER DEFENSE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Nothing could have been worse than if we had brought bin Laden to the United States and a federal court had ordered him to be released.

ENSOR (on camera): While they are wary of hidden agendas and tainted information, U.S. intelligence officials say they are reaching out to anyone and any government, no matter how unsavory, that might have information useful in the fight against terrorism.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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