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U.S. Deciding Whether to Prosecute John Walker; Bin Laden Proving to be Elusive.

Aired December 18, 2001 - 05:14   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: The U.S. is deciding how or even whether to prosecute John Walker, the 20-year-old American captured fighting for the Taliban.

As CNN's Susan Candiotti reports, Walker's case is a sensitive one.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush says American Taliban John Walker has been questioned properly by the U.S. government. But when Walker was aught in an al Qaeda round up in an Afghan prison, was he read his Miranda rights protecting him against self-incrimination?

EUGENE FIDELL, INSTITUTE OF MILITARY JUSTICE: If the government were to try to admit in evidence statements that he made without having been warned, his defense counsel will certainly make an issue of that.

CANDIOTTI: If Walker's interrogation by the FBI and U.S. military does not pass legal muster, prosecutors could not use any evidence obtained from those interviews in a civilian court.

JOHN WALKER: Actually, originally I came with the Pakistanis.

CANDIOTTI: But Walker did talk to CNN about meeting Osama bin Laden in training camps and being sent to fight in Kashmir. Press interviews require no special warning and anything he said here might well be used against him. Beyond the evidence, what's the charge? A U.S. official says Walker has admitted undergoing terrorist training at al Qaeda camps. But was he training against the U.S.?

STANLEY COHEN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Obviously the fact that he received formal training, you know, begins to paint a certain picture. You need more than that picture to prosecute someone for violation of U.S. substantive law.

CANDIOTTI: He remains in military custody, currently on a U.S. ship in the Arabian Sea. A lawyer hired by his parents complained Walker has not had access to an attorney for more than two weeks. The Justice Department is looking at several charges that carry a possible death penalty, including treason and murder of a U.S. government employee. Lesser charges include providing material support to terrorists.

The president says Walker, as a U.S. citizen, will not face a military tribunal.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And so we'll make the determination whether or not he stays within the military system or comes into the civil justice system.

CANDIOTTI: Administration officials won't say when they'll decide Walker's fate.

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The Department of Defense and others are still inquiring to determine exactly what happened to Mr. Walker, how he came to be a Taliban, what activities he factually engaged in as a member of the Taliban.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): It's even possible, though unlikely, Walker may not be charged at all. Depending on what he has to offer, he could wind up as a witness for the government, terrifying against the very people with whom he fought.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: So right now let's return to the search for Osama bin Laden. He's the world's most wanted man, but he's also proving to be the world's most elusive.

Last night, CNN's Aaron Brown asked two experts about the bin Laden manhunt, our terrorism expert, Peter Bergen, and our military analyst, Retired General Wesley Clark.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Going into Pakistan doesn't really help him because the Pakistani government is quite enthusiastically looking for him and this $25 million reward, you know, the average wage of an Afghan doctor is $6 a month so $25 million is a lot of money, whether you're on the Pakistan border or on the Afghan border.

So I think that people are looking for him. Where he is exactly, obviously, no one knows.

AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And General, if you're running the war, do you believe at this point you've got some al Qaeda fighters, you might, are you getting the kind of intelligence you think you need to find him?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME COMMANDER: Probably not. But I don't think we've completely swept through the area yet. This is a larger area by far than what the few hundred members of the Eastern Alliance reported. We've been bombing a very localized place. The small arms fire died off. We know we don't have as many people as we thought were up there. They're somewhere. Maybe they've gone into Pakistan, maybe they're in hiding or they've been incorporated back through Afghanistan.

That area needs to be swept. It needs to be swept by the Eastern Alliance troops with the U.S. special forces in support. We need aircraft overhead. It's probably safe to bring in some helicopters to work at lower altitudes with the helicopters to get a better look at things.

We haven't heard anything about these great caverns that had all of the appliances in them with the exits into Pakistan. Where is it? We haven't heard about it yet. So obviously there's more there to be found.

BROWN: And, Peter, you've talked to bin Laden. You've researched bin Laden. Is it conceivable to you, this is a guess, I understand that, but is it conceivable to you that A, he didn't have a plan to get away, or B, he would allow himself to be captured? BERGEN: I think it's very unlikely he'd allow himself to be captured. I think that he's made a number of statements indicating that he's willing to die. Of course, you know, we may all want to go to heaven, but not necessarily immediately, and bin Laden may have other ideas.

But I think that he has decided to die in this struggle. He's made a number of statements recently that indicate that.

BROWN: And, Peter, one more point on this. Do you think that he anticipated, given what we saw in the tape last week that he knew in advance and all of the rest, do you think he anticipated what has happened in Afghanistan, that the Americans would come in the way they came in and all the rest? BERGEN: I really don't think so, Aaron.

I mean if you look at that, the videotape, he, you know, the three or four floors of the World Trade Center was perhaps the idea, that they were going to take down. You know, let's say you do the thought experiment where a hundred Americans were killed. Would we have the same kind of overwhelming response that we've seen?

I think bin Laden may have calculated the response would have been not dissimilar to after the U.S. Embassy bombing attacks in Afghan capital, which was simply a cruise missile attack. So I think he badly underestimated the American response.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: And a quick programming note. Laura Bush is on LARRY KING LIVE tonight and we're going to bring you an extended except of that interview with the first lady tomorrow morning right here on DAYBREAK just in case you miss it.

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