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CNN Looks at What Videotapes Tell About al Qaeda Training

Aired August 21, 2002 - 14:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is joining us live now, a few questions about the videotape that we just saw.
You talk about a high level of sophistication, for example, in one area, they mocked up urban warfare some in sort of western urban city. But to me, it just looked like rocks and ribbons. How sophisticated really was it?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what the expert says, if you look at that, the training there, it is not for sort of a guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan. The reason that they have gone to the trouble of building those mock houses stone by stone and laying out the white stones along the track and marking roads is to completely recreate for their trainees the fact that they are in urban environment. So the level of sophistication and dedication and aim and intent just to put that together, just to bring them up to speed to work in an urban environment, and then to add on all the levels of training.

Before this exercise, and we have seen this on earlier elements of the tape -- and this one tape just alone with three hours in training -- we see him doing that pistol practice, we see him bring in the different elements and expertises together and rehearsing those before they even bring it onto this mock battlefield, this mock city -- so sophistication and dedication.

LIN: When you take a look at this -- this tape is now four years old -- can you draw from that what is their level of sophistication today and where are they training now?

ROBERTSON: Well, the level of sophistication achieved here, our experts say, is equal to that of a First World special forces.

LIN: The United States.

ROBERTSON: Well, they have the United States special forces operating manual, the same with the British special forces operating manual. They're learning from best material. And they know what they are shooting for; they know what they are trying to achieve.

LIN: How did they get that material?

ROBERTSON: Well, it is known that some al Qaeda members have in fact been members of U.S. forces before, so perhaps that is the rub.

LIN: Americans themselves? ROBERTSON: People who have had American nationality, yes.

LIN: All right.

Do you know much more about the trainers then, the people who actually are conducting the training exercises?

ROBERTSON: One of the interesting thing about one of those trainers it he actually shows up on another Osama bin Laden videotape as an interpreter, and our experts say Look, these are the people that are actually really the most dangerous for al Qaeda: The people who can speak English really well are the people who can move into a Western environment -- Europe, the United States -- and disappear.

LIN: Have you gotten feedback from the intelligence community here as to how helpful this is to them in knowing what al Qaeda might do next or what they are capable of.

ROBERTSON: I think perhaps David Grange, CNN's military analyst, has addressed that really well. He looked at this videotape and said, yes, yes, yes, concern about this, concern about this. He said, But look, I can see from this this is how they make mistakes. They are not making any -- it's all offensive training; there's no defensive training.

So CNN's military expert, I mean, he can pretty much see the mistakes that al Qaeda is making, so I would imagine the intelligence community could probably draw the same conclusions.

LIN: All right, thank you very much, Nic.

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