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Newly Uncovered Videotapes Demonstrate Extent of Al Qaeda Bombmaking Knowledge

Aired August 22, 2002 - 14:02   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Newly uncovered videotapes show Al Qaeda has not only learned how to make high explosives, but can distribute that knowledge in ways that frighten even seasoned ordinance experts. It is another chilling portion of the Al Qaeda archives CNN's Nic Robertson brought back from Afghanistan. Here is today's report, "Explosive Force."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): When we first put this tape from the al Qaeda library in a VCR, this is what we saw. Another Grade-B action film, but fast- forward, and this is what you see.

At first glance, little more than a simple chemistry lesson. In fact, that's exactly what it's intended to be. But this is not some harmless high school laboratory project. The first clue is a declaration at the beginning of the lesson, quoting the Koran and urging Muslims to fight in the cause of God.

This is a training video for select al Qaeda recruits, delivered by an instructor, whose face we never see, with all the steps needed to make pure TNT and high-explosive bombs from scratch. What we are going to show is enough detail from the three-hour tape to illuminate what al Qaeda was up to.

But nowhere near enough, say our experts, to allow anyone to make a bomb.

TONY VILLA, COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERT: You'll see how it runs down, and then you have a quick flash.

ROBERTSON: Tony Villa is a consultant for the U.S. government on terror tactics and bomb making. Like most experts in that field, he knows terror groups already have a good knowledge of how to make a bomb. What he found shocking in this video was how far al Qaeda has refined the art.

VILLA: I did not think that they were able to -- they would have that capability at this point. And it's not so much the fact that they've manufactured explosives, but the type of explosives they have manufactured, and that they have manufactured their own detonators.

ROBERTSON: That's a detonator and fuse the instructor on the tape is inserting into the explosive. A detonator is used to set off the main explosive charge in a bomb. The experts say it's not just the major step that al Qaeda can now make detonators, but that the whole bomb-making process utilizes easy-to-get chemicals. That means bomb makers don't draw attention to themselves, are harder to catch.

VILLA: They can pick a target venue or a target city with nothing on them, arrive in that city, and based on what we are seeing here, using common materials.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Have you seen this before?

VILLA: No.

ROBERTSON: Does it surprise you what they have developed?

VILLA: Yes, it does.

ROBERTSON: How?

VILLA: Historically, this has been very difficult to manufacture. To realize that they are able to manufacture this in a make-shift lab really speaks volumes to their studies and their commitment to this.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): A commitment that CNN began to uncover last November, with the discovery in an abandoned al Qaeda safe house of laboratory manuals, detailing step-by-step the manufacture of high explosives, including TNT.

Among those documents, a shopping list of required chemical ingredients, a list so detailed, it explains how key chemicals can easily be extracted from household products, purchased in pharmacies and grocery stores.

For Villa, the training video confirms his fear. The group's techniques are now so sophisticated, al Qaeda can cheat detection. Terrorists can move from country to country without explosives.

VILLA: The significance of it is they are very hard to trace, that they are able to maintain their autonomy and their elusiveness. More importantly, they can arrive in a target venue, or city if you will, and get all of the materials, virtually buy the materials, the materials will be something that are off the shelf.

ROBERTSON: Listen to the instructor as he shares one of the many steps in the complicated manufacture of mercury foraminate, one component in the detonators: "Let me mention that this nitric is locally made. Put it in a glass bowl, add the mercury to the nitric acid, mix the whole thing together until the liquidation process is over. Watch out for the smoke that's coming out of the mixture, avoid it."

It is the combination of this detailed training video and the written manuals that concerns counterterrorism expert, Magnus Ranstorp. MAGNUS RANSTORP, UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS: It gives them a great operational advantage. They can acquire these chemicals on the open market. There is both the written manuals on how to put it together, but more importantly, perhaps even the best guide you can ever have is the visual imagery of how do you mix these things together.

ROBERTSON: So why was the instructional video embedded inside a Grade-B movie? Experts say it was to disseminate their explosive knowledge without getting caught.

RANSTORP: It is like a virus (ph) that they can then miniaturize the space which they require. They don't need the mountains of Afghanistan. They can train them in the basements, they can use basements to do training.

ROBERTSON: For al Qaeda, a new level of invisibility, and the possibility the information can be or already has been passed to other terror groups. It is not clear how long this video has been in existence.

VILLA: We may be at the threshold of a whole new wave of terror, potentially. This information getting in the wrong hands, obviously, would cause quite a bit of havoc to our society and to our country and to our allies. It makes the detection of the terrorists that much more difficult.

ROBERTSON: And al Qaeda has had plenty of successes with its bomb-making technology. In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania destroyed by truck bombs. Two years later, the terror group's bomb makers attacked the USS Cole that harbored in Yemen.

(on camera): And one foiled attack gives insight into how al Qaeda uses the technology is disseminating. In December, 2000, four suspected al Qaeda members were arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting to blow up Strasburg's ancient cathedral. When investigators dug more deeply into their possessions, they discovered a collection of chemicals that experts say the terrorists were planning to turn into a bomb.

(voice-over): In the other al Qaeda documents, recovered by CNN last November, details of how TNT, similar to that manufactured on the training video, is key to al Qaeda's efforts to build a radioactive, or so-called dirty bomb.

RANSTORP: Pure TNT is extraordinarily dangerous and may be linked towards trying to circumvent the process of making a nuclear device.

ROBERTSON (on camera): In what way?

RANSTORP: In dispersing the material radiologically.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): There's nothing in any of the 64 videotapes CNN has obtained to show al Qaeda has acquired the components necessary to manufacture a dirty bomb; no lessons, for example, in handling radioactive material. But, experts say, the videos, combined with the documents, raise plenty of concern about al Qaeda capability for dirty bombs and other kinds of explosive applications.

VILLA: You can't rule anything out in terms of what their capabilities are and where they're going with this. I would have to think it's more of a suicide bomber.

ROBERTSON: Whatever the process, dirty bomb, suicide bomb or high explosive-bomb, it seems al Qaeda has already ignited the fuse on a chain of events that, for now, may be undetectable.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Just amazing. And really sickening to watch. Just fascinating.

I guess what is most scary about this, as you said in the report, is that this allows them to be mobile. This means they don't have to make a device in one country and transport it over a border, which is a big security problem.

ROBERTSON: Or they don't have to be in a cub try buying things like detonators. One of the thing the experts pointed out here are the detonators. Normally, terrorists in the past haven't been able to make these, the detonators, going out to buy a detonator, sort of one of those trigger things that flips on the radar for intelligence agency, kind of a trip wire to let them know terrorists are out there. This way, in whatever country it is, they can carry on, make the bomb and there is nothing -- there is no messages being sent out. There is no information that is going to alert intelligence agencies what's happening.

COOPER: TNT -- it's is very crude in a way, and as you said, some of these recipes are on the Internet, and in our videotape that we found, we did not show enough to actually show viewers how to actually make this.

But explain a little bit how TNT would be used. As you said, it's perhaps a trigger for a nuclear device and for a dirty bomb as well.

ROBERTSON: There are several things here. One is that what they are making here is pure TNT. The analysts can't say how good it is, if you will, until they sort of replicate and make it for themselves. It was a three-hour video, and we did only show a very tiny section of it. So it's a complicated process. People have told us, experts, by looking at this, they can say the scientists working on it are very skilled, we don't see their faces.

But they say, just look at the way they fold the filter paper, that shows they are experienced chemists. What they say Al Qaeda has done is condense the manufacture of this type of explosive. It is part of Al Qaeda's efforts, and these are the efforts that have been documented, that they want to try to achieve a dirty bomb, maybe even nuclear bomb. But it's the dirty bomb that experts fear. This pure TNT could be used. It would be the core of the bomb. There would be radiological material packed around it. This pure high explosive TNT would then distribute that radioactive material. That's a dirty bomb, and people who track this -- bomb-making experts around the world tracking this believe because of the documentation Al Qaeda's left behind that's what they were pursuing.

COOPER: In a sense, TNT is just creating a giant stick of dynamite, and you can surround it whatever you want, whether it be nails or biological agents.

ROBERTSON: Absolutely. Or they could use it, as our expert said here, for a suicide bomber. Those little sticks are just like the sticks that get stuck in the suicide vests that people wear. So there are a number of applications. What they've done is really perfect the technique and then distribute it to their operatives, and made them undetectable.

COOPER: It is amazing video. Nic, thanks very much for bringing it to us.

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