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Pakistan: Search for Osama bin Laden Continues
Aired May 03, 2002 - 20:00 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.
ANNOUNCER: If Osama bin Laden is alive, perhaps he's hiding here or here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very difficult for him to reorganize things or reactivate his network, because everything has fallen apart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, what bin Laden and his followers may be doing now and what's being done to find them.
In Afghanistan, a new battle ground on the war on terrorism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's being conducted at 11,000 feet above sea level. It's very rugged terrain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Plus, the bizarre secret trial in the Daniel Pearl murder.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The venue for trial that was (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in Karachi, is also likely to come under attack.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is all absurd, incorrect, inhuman, illegal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And the new story that may have given terrorists the idea for September 11th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it was a pure case of suicide?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it would appear to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ANNOUNCER: LIVE FROM PAKISTAN, "Wanted: bin Laden." Now from Islamabad, Mike Chinoy.
MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, I'm Mike Chinoy in Islamabad.
When the terror attacks of September 11 took place, President George Bush said the United States would get Osama bin Laden dead or alive. Now almost eight months later, the U.S.-led military campaign has scored dramatic successes. The al Qaeda network inside Afghanistan has largely been destroyed. But Osama bin Laden's whereabouts remain unknown. We're not even sure if he's alive or whether he was killed in the fighting.
Now the military operation has entered a new phase, crossing the border here into Afghanistan. It's a complex and difficult operation. It raises new challenges and new questions.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): This gate marks the end of the central government's full authority and the start of what are known as the tribal areas of Pakistan's northwest frontier province. A wild region, where almost every adult male carries a gun, where the locals have close ties of kinship and culture with neighboring Afghanistan. The surviving members of al Qaeda are seeking refuge from U.S.-led attacks.
(on camera): Now, teams of American advisers are reported to be working with the Pakistani military in these tribal areas, searching for al Qaeda fugitives.
(voice-over): A 10-hour bus drive from that gate is a tribal area called north Wazeristan (ph), where there have been persistent but unconfirmed reports that Osama bin Laden and other key al Qaeda figures may be hiding.
ISMAIL KHAN, PAKISTANI JOURNALIST: There were bin Laden training camps dotted along the border, north of the Istan (ph) agency, people who are generally sympathetic towards the Taliban and maybe the Arabs.
CHINOY: Pakistani journalist Ismail Khan interviewed bin Laden in one of those camps four years ago. He says the American-led campaign is taking its toll.
KHAN: The present circumstances, it's very difficult for him to reorganize things, you know, reactivate his network because everything has fallen apart.
CHINOY: That's made Pakistan's teeming cities an equally important refuge for al Qaeda.
(on camera): This non-descript residence in a middle-class neighborhood of Lahore was an al Qaeda safe house. From this building and another one nearby, 16 al Qaeda members were arrested recently, their wives and children, all of Middle Eastern origin, are still inside. It's widely believed there are many such safe houses like this dotted around Pakistan.
(voice-over): The neighbors here say they didn't know anything and were astonished when police raided the house after stopping a car nearby for a routine traffic check and discovering those inside didn't speak the local language.
It was in another such safe house in the city of Faisalabad that a joint U.S./Pakistani operation seized Abu Zubaydah, the most senior al Qaeda figure captured so far. According to diplomatic and security sources, Pakistani extremist groups are providing critical support for al Qaeda here. Author Ahmed Rashid wrote what is widely considered the definitive book on the Taliban.
AHMED RASHID, AUTHOR: Some of these Pakistani groups have had long-standing links during the height of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They were providing passports, logistics, tickets, safe houses, communications, telephones, cell phones to al Qaeda. And that relationship persists today.
CHINOY: But with Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, maneuvering to consolidate his power, critics claim the government is mounting only a half-hearted crackdown on homegrown Islamic extremists, even though they're clearly helping al Qaeda.
SAMINA AHMED, INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: If they focus too much attention on the militant groups as the U.S. would want them to do, well, then they risk upsetting perhaps even potential allies. After all, some of the religious parties are supporting Musharraf.
CHINOY: There's also a conflict over Kashmir, the mountainous territory claimed by both Pakistan and India. For years, Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI, has encouraged Pakistani Islamic militants to cross into Kashmir and fight against Indian rule there.
RASHID: Musharraf can't afford to crack down to such an extent on these Pakistani militant groups, to the extent that they stop supporting the Kashmiri mujahedeen or that their support is somehow reduced.
CHINOY: That may explain why Musharraf's government has freed most of the 2,000 militants it rounded up in January, and observers say, why it has done little to curb extremism in the madrasas, or religious schools that have long served as a breeding ground for fundamentalism. Pakistani officials insist President Musharraf remains solidly behind the war on terrorism.
GEN. RASHID QURESHI, PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESMAN: Frankly, he's totally committed to the elimination of extremism, terrorism, whether it's religious extremism or ethnic or it is whatever sort.
CHINOY: In the war in Afghanistan, President Musharraf has indeed proved to be a stalwart American ally. But as the hunt for al Qaeda shifts to Pakistan, the picture is much less clear.
(END VIDEOTAPE) (on camera): Getting information about the military operation under way on the Pakistani side of the border isn't easy. The area is off limits to foreigners. But CNN's Kamal Hyder is in Miran Shah, the main town in north Wazeristan and he joins us now live via videophone. Kamal, tell us what you're seeing and hearing there.
KAMAL HYDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Mike, the first thing to see here is intensified military patrols along the border. Pakistan has brought in more forces. We were told yesterday that reinforcements are also arriving. So Pakistan is taking this very, very seriously indeed, because Pakistan knows that it entails a heavy price. And if terrorists are able to cross into Pakistan and hide here, then obviously they can hide.
We have seen evidence that the Pakistani special forces are now very, very active in the area, and Pakistan is doing this at the time when 1 million Indian forces are poised on the other border. So it becomes at a very difficult time, but the Pakistani authorities seem to be doing whatever they can to try to prevent any al Qaeda terrorists from coming into Pakistan and using Pakistan as a safe hiding ground -- Mike.
CHINOY: What can you tell us about the role that American advisers are playing? Their presence obviously on Pakistani soil in operations, very, very sensitive.
HYDER: Well, the American advisers are here and they have cooperated with the Pakistani authorities. The Pakistan authorities, it must be remembered, have a very difficult task because they're dealing with a very volatile area. This is the tribal area. And the Pakistanis are trying to avoid a backlash from the people here. So for the Pakistani military authority, it's a very difficult task indeed to try and maintain the stability of the tribal area and at the same time assist the international coalition in this war against terror -- Mike.
CHINOY: What's your sense of the local sentiment? People in the past have been generally quite sympathetic to the Taliban.
HYDER: Well, the Taliban have lost their old friend. I mean, you know, the mullah, the religious party, they have all been contained. You know, you've been covering this place yourself, you know that the same vehement support that you may have had for these people is no longer there.
And the other thing, the most important thing is that the leaders of these fanatical outfits, including Soufi Muhammad (ph), who was untouchable, is behind bars. So the Pakistani authorities have proven beyond doubt that they will take whatever it takes to arrest any terrorist that may endanger the security of Pakistan -- Mike.
CHINOY: OK, thanks. Kamal Hyder reporting to us live from Miran Shah, the main town in north Wazeristan, where a joint U.S./Pakistani operation is underway hunting for al Qaeda.
The spread of the military campaign across the border into Pakistan and the issues about how the Pakistani government is handling this challenge poses new and difficult questions for the United States and its relationship with Pakistan.
Joining us now to discuss this and other issues is former U.S. Congressman Steven Solarz, now vice chairman of the International Crisis Group. Mr. Solarz, thanks very much for being with us.
Let me start by asking you the role of the Pakistani government in pursuing this crackdown. Pakistan has been extremely helpful to the United States in its military efforts inside Afghanistan. Do you think that President Musharraf's administration can play an equally effective role inside Pakistan given all the domestic political constraints on his ability to crack down?
STEPHEN SOLARZ, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: There's no question that General Musharraf has been very helpful to the United States in facilitating the war against terrorism, not only in Afghanistan, but to some extent inside the tribal areas within Pakistan itself. My sense is that Musharraf has much more leeway than a lot of people think in cracking down on indigenous Pakistani extremism than is widely believed. And I think for the future of his country, it's essential that he does so.
CHINOY: There are some indications, though, that in Pakistan proper, the government, while it has taken some steps against hard- line Islamic radicals, has not acted as forcefully as critics here contend it should, that there have been people arrested who have then been freed, that some of these organizations have been able to sort of change their names and their offices but otherwise operate. Does this risk becoming an area of contention between the United States and Pakistan in the coming months?
SOLARZ: I think, unfortunately, the critics are right. The anti-terrorism policy within Pakistan has the characteristic of a revolving door. Mr. Musharraf arrests these people and then most of them are let out.
Furthermore, while he has cooperated in the war against terrorism on his western border, he's very much a part of the terrorist campaign emanating from the eastern border of Pakistan into India. The intelligence agencies and military within Pakistan are recruiting, training, indoctrinating, arming, dispatching and directing terrorist groups from Pakistan into Kashmir and other parts of India that have been responsible for not only attacks against the state parliament in Kashmir, but the Indian parliament itself. They've massacred wedding parties. They've stopped buses, take people off, put the Hindus on one side, the Muslims on another and then slaughtered the Hindus. This is terrorism, pure and simple.
And in response to what Pakistan has done, the Indians have mobilized a million men along the border. This is a time bomb ticking away, waiting to explode. And if Musharraf doesn't bring this kind of support for terrorism along his eastern border to an end, there's a real possibility that India will feel it has no alternative but to take matters into its own hands, launch a military campaign against Pakistan. And given the fact that both countries have nuclear weapons, we could well witness the first nuclear war of the 21st century unless this terrorist campaign emanating from Pakistan is brought to an end.
CHINOY: Former Congressman Solarz, we'll have to leave it there. Thanks very much for speaking with us.
When we come back, we'll go live to Afghanistan for a look at how the military campaign on that side of the border is proceeding. Stay with us.
ANNOUNCER: Next, on the frontlines in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want to kill or capture the al Qaeda/Taliban terrorists in our area.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The latest on the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Also ahead, it's a friend in the sky for allied forces on the ground.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever they need us to do, either just to fly over them and provide presence, to keep the bad guys from trying to do anything tricky on us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We'll take flight with the A-10 when we return.
For more on the war against terror, check out interactive special section at cnn.com. It's full of reports from the frontlines and the home front and goes in-depth on the investigation. For AOL users, the key word is CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Some 1,000 troops are taking part in Operation Snipe in the mountains in southeastern Afghanistan. About half the force is made up of Royal British Marines. The rest are mostly Afghan soldiers loyal to the interim government. The troops are backed by U.S. air support and some American special forces.
CHINOY: Coalition forces involved in Operation Snipe are looking to clear caves and valleys and mountains of al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers and capture and kill whoever they can find there. At the moment, much of the operation involves gathering intelligence and moving people into position from the Bagram Air Base. That's where CNN's Bill Delaney is and he joins us live now with more -- Bill.
BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, thank you, Mike. We're at Bagram Air Base here about an hour's drive or so north of the Afghan capital, Kabul; 4,000 soldiers based here, 2,700 of them American. All of them involved in a new ongoing phase of the struggle to root out the remaining al Qaeda and Taliban fighters here in Afghanistan.
They are fewer in number. They are harder to find. Now the main fighting force at the moment, as you alluded to, is British. One thousand British Royal Marines deployed four or five days ago from Bagram Air Base, where we are, Operation Snipe. To the high mountains of southeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, these soldiers working at times at altitudes as high as 14,000 feet, targeting we're told in particular an al Qaeda base, one of the few remaining in the country. A Royal Marines commander stressing the other day that the struggle here now is as much about as overrunning such bases, searching caves, dismantling the structure of terror here as it is of actually confronting Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, those that remain.
Here at Bagram, though, the danger for all the soldiers here is still very real and even amid intermittent combat, so is the commitment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): From the cockpit of an A-10 attack jet over Afghanistan.
COL. CHAN FLOYD, U.S. AIR FORCE: It's calmed down somewhat. There hasn't been a large-scale force that we've seen from the enemy, and we're having to go out and search out for them. It's always there, and so it's always in the back of your mind and you just don't want to linger around for an extended period of time when you think that they may have some of the stuff that they do have.
DELANEY: Remaining al Qaeda and Taliban fighters can conceivably bring down Colonel Chan Floyd's A-10 with ground fire and surface to air missiles every time he flies.
FLOYD: Well, our primary role is to fly and support the ground forces, our coalition, out here and whatever they need us to do, either just to fly over them and provide presence to keep the bad guys from trying to do anything tricky on us.
We're obviously rolling the airplanes around to see the ground better and to check our bellies to see if no one is shooting at us, and then at the same time, check in the flight leader, the wing man, to make sure no one is shooting at them and to observe fire, if we do see it, to direct them to maneuver the aircraft as appropriately. That's why you see the airplanes rolling around so much.
DELANEY: Every day, for a couple of hours each mission, pairs of A-10s soar from Bagram Air Base, in a war increasingly now with shadows.
(on camera): The kind of conflict being fought here in Afghanistan shifted to a degree just in the past month or so. Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters now scattered, numbering in the hundreds, most military analysts agree, not the thousands, and encountered mostly in small groups of only 15 or so by coalition ground forces, when they're encountered at all.
(voice-over): At first glance, life at Bagram Air Base can seem like a fair amount of down time for the 4,000 or so soldiers there, 2,700 of them American.
Look a bit closer: activity steady, intense, 24 hours a day, supporting British, American and Australian ground forces in harms way every day.
September 11, 232 days in the past the day we visited Bagram present.
SGT. VERONICA CHEEVER, U.S. AIR FORCE: Every day when you look around, you're like, yes, that's why I'm here. It's not anything that's far away.
DELANEY: And then there's Corporal Peter Sarvis. He refuels aircraft now. On September 11, he was a Wall Street stockbroker, married just three days. Half a dozen friends of his died in the World Trade Center. About a week after that, he enlisted.
CPL. PETER SARVIS, U.S. AIR FORCE: I'm still working on emotion. You know, I get up every morning, I brought some pictures of you know, people that I've lost to the tragedy, people that I know back home to kind of get me up a little quicker in the morning, get me out here doing my job.
DELANEY: A job from pilots to rank and file soldiers, to refuelers, part of a struggle likely to go on for many years against forces now often hard to see, but that last September showed how ruthlessly they can make their presence known.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(on camera): The base here now coming to life. You may hear some helicopters just on the runway over on our side here beginning to rev up. One thing I should mention about Bagram Air Base, they're improving it. They're enhancing it all the time. You get the feeling they intend to be here for a long time -- Mike.
CHINOY: Bill, from the British in the 1800's to the Russians 20 years ago, the history of foreign soldiers fighting in Afghanistan has not been a happy one. Did the troops that you're talking to express any concern about getting bogged down in the kind of guerrilla war that has brought so many previous foreign soldiers to grief to Afghanistan?
DELANEY: Well, you know, Mike, you hear that sort of thing more from military analysts than from the troops themselves who are still very gung-ho. What you do hear from troops here and special forces I've spoken to myself, that they're concerned mostly now with the difficulty of finding the people they're trying to confront and kill. Now, of course, that's an indication that, yes, this war is now starting to shift to what is -- even already something of a classic mountain guerrilla war. We're in the early stages of that, but it could go on for many, many years, Mike.
CHINOY: OK, thanks. Bill Delaney reporting live from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
The British-led Operation Snipe is part of a bigger military operation called Mountain Lion. It's aimed at flushing out the remaining al Qaeda leadership from their hideouts. CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has more on this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): So far, little sign of al Qaeda or Taliban fighters as British-led coalition troops sweep through southeastern Afghanistan. The working theory is most have sought sanctuary in the lawless tribal areas across the border in northern Pakistan. Their sources say small numbers of U.S. special forces are with Pakistani units hunting them down.
BRIG. GEN. JOHN ROSA, DEPUTY OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, JOINT STAFF: We're coordinating and working every day hand in hand with the Pakistani forces.
MCINTYRE: The current operation clearing southern Afghanistan appears to be the setup for a squeeze play. In military parlance, it's known as a hammer and anvil maneuver. U.S. and coalition forces will be assume blocking positions along the Afghan border with Pakistan. Then Pakistani troops would attack small pockets of the enemy, forcing them to the north, squeezing them between the two armies.
RETIRED MAJOR GENERAL DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: If there's anything in that area to be pushed into the area where the troops are, this will work. But on the other hand, it doesn't mean that this is a huge operation that's going to garner a bunch of dead or a bunch of material.
MCINTYRE: Pentagon sources say Operation Mountain Lion has succeeded in one respect: thousands of weapons discovered can no longer be used by any al Qaeda who return.
SHEPPERD: I think you're going to see ongoing things like this for certainly weeks, probably months and maybe years.
MCINTYRE: The big unknown: Will the dragnet snag any big fish, such as Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants?
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I do not know in direct answer to your question of any intelligence that I would personally say is actionable with respect to very senior people at the moment.
MCINTYRE (on camera): What Pentagon officials say is not about to happen is another major battle like Operation Anaconda. After hundreds of al Qaeda were killed two months ago in the Shah-e-Kot valley, they have not made the mistake again of concentrating in a single easy target.
Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: Joining us for more insight on the military side of things is CNN military analyst Don Shepperd. He's a retired Air Force general. General Shepperd, thanks for being with us.
Let me start by asking you the same question I asked Bill Delaney at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. As the nature of this war changes, are the coalition forces in danger of getting sucked into the kind of endless and frustrating guerrilla war where, in the past, so many foreign armies have come to grieved fighting in Afghanistan?
SHEPPERD: Well, Mike, I would take a little bit different tack on your question there. Is there going to be guerrilla activity in Afghanistan for an extended period of time? Yes. The type of operations that we're engaged in now, even Anaconda, which was a larger operation than the one we're engaged in, is not going to wipe al Qaeda out. There's nothing that's going to prevent them for months, weeks, and maybe even years, from getting small numbers of people, bombs, rockets, those type of thing, and launching attacks.
But their ability to communicate, to command and control forces, to mass for large attacks, appears to have been totally disrupted at least at this point. If they gather again, our intelligence will give us the opportunity to go and hit them as a big target, Mike. So, again, I don't see this as a huge threat, and I don't see it as a failure if these kind of attacks continue for a long period of time.
CHINOY: You mentioned intelligence. I want to ask you about that because on the ground in Afghanistan, for years, foreigners who worked there, journalists and aid workers in the '80s and '90s said getting an accurate picture of what's actually going on in a very complex and backwards society is not easy.
What kind of intelligence are the coalition forces getting on the ground that are helping them to make the decisions about where they go and who they chase?
SHEPPERD: Mike, that's the most difficult thing that a military commander has to do. It's not getting information that's the problem. It's sorting that information and collating it in an actionable form that you can go after a target.
Thousands of leads, thousands of pieces of information come in every day.
Now computers have helped us do this, as have our systems of sensors, our overhead satellites, things such as the Predator, the Global Hawk that's been deployed over there and of course, human intelligence sources. All of this is put together in a mosaic, but in the end, it has to be decided upon by a human.
In other words, a human judgment comes in at the end and all of that responsibility, even though it goes through the intelligence community, rests with General Franks, the commander in chief.
So far, I'd say that the things have been going very well, Mike, but it's a complicated day-to-day process with no end.
CHINOY: One of the tricky things here is that the United States and coalition forces' main allies in Afghanistan have been primarily from the Northern Alliance, and most of the people in the Northern Alliance are not from the main ethnic group in Afghanistan, but from a minority ethnic group the Tajiks, and there is some concern that the kind of information that is being given to the coalition people and I hear this from people I've been talking to here, may also be designed to shape internal rivalries, tribal and political rivalries in Afghanistan.
What can the coalition forces do to be sure that the information they're getting is not being used by local factions for their own political purposes?
SHEPPERD: Mike, you can never be absolutely sure, and the picture that you've painted is exactly correct. The Northern Alliance is not from the area that we're operating in right now. That area is basically the Pashtun area, the tribal area of Afghanistan in the southeastern portion of Afghanistan and in the northwestern provinces of Pakistan, and even though there's a border on maps, there isn't any line on the ground that divides them. They have a lot of contact, areas of smuggling, loyalties going back and forth, sides being switched from time to time in various wars.
And so, again it comes down to human judgment. We've put Special Forces people with these various units and we do the best we can to sort this out. At the same time, we're trying to spread security all over the country by establishing police forces, law and order, by getting in with the various warlords and also trying to train an Afghan army. It's a difficult and complicated picture, Mike.
CHINOY: OK, thanks very much, General Don Shepperd, CNN Military Analyst. We'll be back with more in LIVE FROM PAKISTAN in a moment. Stay with us.
ANNOUNCER: Later this hour.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think of all those families, all of those who perished on 9/11 and I would hate to think that that was a copycat of the EGYPTAIR event.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Did al Qaeda take notes from a 1999 plane crash? We'll take a look when LIVE FROM PAKISTAN "Wanted: Bin Laden," returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHINOY: Coming up in LIVE FROM PAKISTAN, we'll speak with the spokesman for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.
ANNOUNCER: Also coming up, the Daniel Pearl murder trial. There's plenty of bickering, but how much justice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This argument has got no legs to stand on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It depends on the new set of circumstances.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have no case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Before we bring you up to date, the closed door trial of four militants accused in Pearl's kidnapping and murder began less than two weeks ago and is already on its third judge.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl disappeared on January 23rd in Karachi, Pakistan. He was investigating links between militant Islamic groups and alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid. A videotape received February 21st by U.S. diplomats in Karachi, confirmed Pearl was dead. His body has not been found.
CHINOY: There have been more complications in the trial of Daniel Pearl. A decision has been made. In the trial of the four men accused of the kidnapping and murder or Daniel Pearl, a decision has been made to move the trial from Karachi, where it had been underway, to the city of Hyderabad, about 100 miles away. As CNN's Ash-Har Quraishi reports, it's the latest twist in a case that has raised many questions but provided few answers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ASH-HAR QURAISHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It began almost two weeks ago, but the trial of four men accused in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl seems to be going nowhere.
The prosecution and the defense have spent more time fighting than deliberating. They've been so combative they've only gotten in three days of hearings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Defense counsel sought an adjournment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This argument has got no legs to stand on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It depends on the new set of circumstances.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have no case and now they are apprehensive.
QURAISHI: Bickering and accusations over applications, evidence, and security has many wondering what exactly prosecutors and defense attorneys are doing behind closed doors, none of which can be verified independently, because the hearings are closed to the media. Only close relatives are allowed inside.
LYAS KHAN, LEGAL ANALYST: Legally, I think that the press should have an access to it but why the court has done that, I can not criticize that, but it has been done and it's something not normal.
QURAISHI: Adding to the air of secrecy, well placed sources tell CNN that the U.S. State Department asked for permission to place an American observer inside the proceedings, something they say the Pakistani government did not allow.
Some observers suggest possible links between the suspected mastermind, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and the powerful Pakistani Intelligence Agency, the ISI, may be exposed during proceedings.
ZAHID HUSSAIN, JOURNALIST: What this -- they are uneasy about it and probably what they want, that why they want the press kept out from the trial, is that at some point, Sheikh Omar is going to speak on his defense. He would be allowed, however, so he will use that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and would come out with some of the things which will not be of -- will not be good for the administration.
QURAISHI (on camera): And then there are the constant delays, which some say may actually be an attempt to weaken media interest in this high profile case. Already the trial is on its third judge. The defense forced a dismissal of the first judge, saying that he was present when the accused killer of Daniel Pearl blurted out a confession while not other oath.
(voice over): Tuesday, the prosecutor forced out the second judge, saying this judge did little to control the defendants who made threatening gestures to him in court, and the latest delay, a change of venue. The trial has been moved to another city altogether. Again, the prosecution cites security reasons.
RAJA QURESHI, CHIEF PROSECUTOR: There are several source of reports which have brought the information with the entire team of the prosecution is to be eliminated and the prosecution witnesses are to be harmed, even to the extent that the venue for trial that centers in Karachi is also likely to come under attack.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is all absurd, incorrect, inhuman, illegal.
QURAISHI: Legal experts question the move as well.
KHAN: In this particular case, since it was proceeding inside the jail, so I don't think that you know this was a valid ground for filing a case or transfer of the case.
QURAISHI: The trial will now be heard in the city of Hyderabad, almost three hours outside of Karachi. Once again, proceedings will be held behind closed doors, far from prying eyes at the Hyderabad Central Jail. The defense plans to appeal the move in the Supreme Court. When this trial will resume is anyone's guess. Ash-Har Quraishi, CNN, Karachi, Pakistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: When we come back, we'll talk with General Rashid Qureshi, the spokesman for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999. He received 97 percent of the vote in this week's referendum on whether he should stay in power another five years.
CHINOY: Welcome back. Joining me now is the spokesman for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, General Rashid Qureshi. General Qureshi, thanks very much for joining us. I want to start by asking, what can you tell us about the military operation underway on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan in North Vaziristan (ph).
GENERAL RASHID QURESHI, PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESMAN: At the beginning of the operation in Afghanistan, there were three areas of cooperation within the coalition forces and Pakistani forces, one of which was information and intelligence sharing. That's gone on near perfect, and people are totally satisfied with that.
All operations being carried out inside Afghanistan are being done by the coalition forces. All actions that may be required to be taken inside Pakistan, especially close to the borders, are being undertaken by Pakistani forces, intelligence officials, security forces, as well as what you saw in Lahore and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) too.
Again, there were certain areas where intelligence and information exchange and sharing was necessary and that's why we've got some communications and intelligence experts with us, very, very few.
CHINOY: American experts?
QURESHI: Yes.
CHINOY: Right.
QURESHI: Who advise and also form a link between the coalition forces inside Afghanistan, Pakistani forces and the coalition air force. So, Pakistani forces have sealed the borders.
But you do know that it's an extremely, extremely difficult border, very, very high mountains, 14,000, 15,000 feet at times, and all routes from Afghanistan into Pakistan have been effectively blocked. It's not to say that an odd trickle can't move into this difficult area, and those are the areas where one needs to have intelligence and information if one needs to move against those. CHINOY: Right. OK. I want to ask you about the Daniel Pearl trial. Why the need for so much secrecy, keeping the public out, keeping reporters out? It raises suspicions that there's something going on there that needs to be hidden?
QURESHI: Not really, not hidden in the sense as if disclosure of that or our government is trying to hide something. There are sensitivities here within Pakistan, where certain extreme elements who would like to exploit certain areas of what would come out in the case, and create trouble. That's the area that one needs to be a little careful about. Otherwise, it's going to be a totally above board trial, with full opportunities afforded to the accused and hopefully justice will be done.
CHINOY: What's your response to critics who say that the government here is taking a kind of cautious approach in really cracking down on homegrown Pakistani extremists, who may be offering some help to al Qaeda members who make it across the border from Afghanistan?
QURESHI: No, I don't think there's any truth in that at all. The Pakistan government is committed, like President Musharraf has said, to work against radicalism, extremism. We've had a lot of problems within Pakistan where you know people have been going to mosques and shooting other people up. That is something which we will not tolerate. The government is moving very strongly against them.
What you're referring to, I've read in the papers sometimes that there was a crackdown on certain extremist elements and then after some time they were released from jail. Now you see the initial crackdown was on all suspected people who could have been a part or could have participated in an unlawful activity.
Once an investigation and interrogation was done, certain people who were not part of that activity obviously had to be released. Those who were and there was any sort of evidence against them, they're still behind bars and their cases are being tried.
CHINOY: OK, we'll have to leave it there, General Qureshi. Thanks very much for speaking with us.
QURESHI: Thank you.
CHINOY: I've been speaking with General Rashid Qureshi, the spokesman for the president in Pakistan. We'll be back with more from LIVE FROM PAKISTAN in a moment.
ANNOUNCER: Next, a new story that may have given terrorists a deadly idea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Bin Laden's folks have been very creative about they way that they do an operation.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ANNOUNCER: LIVE FROM PAKISTAN, "Wanted: Bin Laden," will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHINOY: Welcome back. After the terror attacks of September 11th, questions were raised about whether there might be some kind of link with the crash of an Egyptian Airlines plane off the coast of the United States two years before.
Now some additional evidence has come to light. CNN's national correspondent Mike Boettcher has the exclusive details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): October 31, 1999, EGYPTAIR Flight 990 takes off from New York with 217 people onboard. Thirty minutes later as it is flying off the coast of Massachusetts, south of Nantucket, the plane disappeared from radar and plunges into the Atlantic Ocean. Everyone onboard dies. Accident or act of terror?
Within days, as the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are recovered, another possibility emerges. Jim Hall was Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board at the time.
JIM HALL, CHAIRMAN, NTSB: You hear the cockpit door close. Some seconds after that, there is the Arabic phrase ;I rely on God; that is uttered, which was eventually uttered 11 times, and then seconds after that is uttered, then there is a disconnect of the auto pilot. Then another utterance of the ;I rely on God,; and then the plane starts into a dive.
BOETTCHER: According to NTSB investigators who analyzed the cockpit voice recorder, it is the relief co-pilot, Jamiel Al-Batudi (ph) who waits until he is the only one in the cockpit before he removes the plane from the auto pilot and points it towards the ocean, and it is Batudi who says, ;I rely on God; over and over. The pilot who had been in the bathroom, rushed back to the cockpit, but was too late to prevent the tragedy. So, it was a pure case of suicide?
HALL: Well, it would appear to be.
BOETTCHER: The suicide scenario was worldwide news by mid- November of 1999. In Cairo, Batudi's family and the Egyptian government were angrily denying the idea, and said the problem was with the Boeing 767, but U.S. investigators found no evidence of a mechanical malfunction.
(on camera): In Afghanistan, someone else was paying attention to the news about EGYPTAIR Flight 990. The reports about the suicide scenario may have given al Qaeda's military commander an idea about how to attack targets in the United States.
(voice over): That man, Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs El-Masry, was in charge of planning al Qaeda operations around the world. U.S. officials have said he was one of those who plotted the September 11th attacks. CNN has learned that captured al Qaeda prisoners have told their interrogators that after September 11th, Atef boasted he got the idea for the attacks from the EGYPTAIR crash. That information comes from a coalition intelligence agency, which helped interrogate al Qaeda prisoners.
BERGER: Bin Laden's folks have been very creative about the way that they do different operations. I mean whether it's blowing up a small boat to blow up an American warship or blowing up trucks outside embassies or 9/11, I mean they've kind of -- they've been fairly creative to use perhaps a bad word, in the way that they've gone about these different terrorist attacks.
BOETTCHER: A timeline of the hijackers' aviation experience seems to offer some support for that theory. One of the hijackers, Hani Hanjour had been in the U.S. taking flight lessons as early as 1996. But pilots Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi only arrives in the U.s. to take flying lessons in the summer of 2000, after EGYPTAIR 990s final flight. Ziad Jarrah got his pilot's license in Germany around the same time.
The idea of crashing a passenger plane had been around even before the EGYPTAIR crash. Algerian terrorists planned to fly this plane into the Eiffel Tower in 1994, but French commandos were able to storm the plane beforehand. And some elements of this December, 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane, including the use of box cutters and taking members of the flight crew hostage, also bears similarities to the September 11th attacks.
Jim Hall says it will likely never be clear why Jamil Al-Batudi crashed EGYPTAIR into the Atlantic, but Hall believes the cockpit tapes show he was in control of the plane when it crashed. As for the idea that it could have inspired al Qaeda's military commander on how to carry out the September 11th attacks.
HALL: I think of all the families, all of those who perished on 9/11 and I would hate to think that that was a copycat of the EGYPTAIR event, but I have no way of knowing.
BOETTCHER: It may be impossible to ever know the exact connection between the two events. Mohammed Atef, the man who allegedly helped plan the events of September 11th is himself believed to be dead, killed in a U.S. attack last November.
Mike Boettcher, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: Eight months after September 11th, the war on terrorism has scored some amazing triumphs, but as it now enters a difficult new phase, it is clear that there are major challenges, both military and political that still lie ahead. And that's LIVE FROM PAKISTAN. I'm Mike Chinoy in Islamabad, thanks for joining us.
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