Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Terrorism Exercise Held in Miami

Aired May 21, 2003 - 14:32   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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Baseball and terror make a strange mix, but believe it or not, that is the theme of today's exercise in Miami. The drill at Pro Player Stadium simulates a terrorist attack at a baseball game. It's a grim reality. Susan Candiotti covering the story from there -- hi, Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra. Well, for now, the exercise is all wrapped up. So far, the biggest terrorism drill that's been carried out in South Florida. Certainly not the first, but definitely the biggest -- in 90 degree heat, we might add.

It was designed to see what would happen if something went wrong, horribly wrong, a disaster taking place at a baseball game. In this case, Pro Player Stadium in the northern part of Miami-Dade County. Here was the setup. You had about 7,000 people in the stadium attending a baseball game, Marlins versus Braves. A home run is hit. All the fans, 7,000 in all, inside standing up and cheering when all of a sudden, someone sets off an unknown chemical agent, and this is how it sounded when it was released.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Throw it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: Now, in actuality, there weren't 7,000 baseball fans inside, but 1,000 volunteers posing as victims as they hit the panic button, started running out of the baseball stadium, some of these people ran through what we call decontamination showers. Some were treated here on site. Some are treated off site at local hospitals, and the drill was to answer questions such as how quickly would the rescuers be able to respond. Some 2,500 of them involved in this exercise, and would they be able to catch the bad guy?

Well, let's talk to the man who designed this exercise drill. He's Bill Johnson with the Miami-Dade Fire Department. Well, did you catch the bad guy, No. 1?

BILL JOHNSON, MIAMI-DADE FIRE DEPARTMENT: Yes, we caught the bad guy. As matter of fact, six times we caught him. We repeated that exercise six times.

CANDIOTTI: What did you want to accomplish in this drill, and did you? JOHNSON: We wanted to get all the different agencies that were involved, over 100 of them, to play together, to work together, and work together effectively, and I believe that was really effectively shown here in this exercise, a very successful one.

CANDIOTTI: One of the ones -- one thing we heard from some of the agencies, you're still working on a way to allow everyone to communicate all at the same time. So far, there isn't that single channel. So how do you work around that?

JOHNSON: Well, I believe this exercise really showed that we could communicate very well. The scope of it was massive, and we did very well in communicating. Very little glitches were found.

CANDIOTTI: Can you give us an example of a glitch?

JOHNSON: I don't know offhand because there were six different exercises going on at the same time. There were some interferences here and there, but by and large, I was able to communicate with everybody in the event.

CANDIOTTI: How did everyone bear up under the heat?

JOHNSON: It was hot, but I think everybody did really well. Very few heat casualties.

CANDIOTTI: So if a disaster like this happened...

JOHNSON: I think we are well prepared, and I think this exercise demonstrated that.

CANDIOTTI: All right. Bill Johnson, thank you very much. Of course, he'll be putting together a formal report card, if you will, about how this drill went. That will probably take a few months to put together, but certainly this is the biggest drill they've carried out in this area so far, and with good reason, because, Kyra, remember, we have thousands of miles of unprotected coastline here in Florida. You have a nuclear power plant in this area, seaports, more than one, and airports with thousands and thousands of people coming in from outside the United States.

So there is good reason to protect this area in particular. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Susan Candiotti. Thank you very much -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Kyra, lately we've been hearing an awful lot about "chatter." And no, we're not talking about a teenager who spends long hours online trying to figure out who will be the next American Idol. We're talking about the term intelligence agencies use to describe communication among terrorists or would-be terrorists, and that communication that is intercepted. So how is it captured, analyzed and ultimately acted upon?

Joining us to talk a little bit about this is our security analyst, Kelly McCann. Kelly, good to have you back. J. KELLY MCCANN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Some of the obvious choices here would be cell phone conversations, computer billboards. Give us a sense of the ways terrorists tend to communicate to cover their tracks.

MCCANN: Well, certainly, with technology as it is today -- I mean, we've got video phones now. You've got numeric codes that can be entered in so that no voice is captured if intercepted. Various kinds of digital photography. There are many, many and more developing every day, ways to communicate, and just as we find and learn about one, they go to another, both being very dynamic forces here on this war on terrorism battlefield.

O'BRIEN: So those fighting terror need to have some technical capability, clearly. There is also, on the other end of it, some low tech ways that messages are transferred around, couriers, and one of the ways we've read about in the past is, for example, the trade in Middle Eastern honey. Why don't you explain some of that?

MCCANN: Absolutely. Well, let's not forget that Osama bin Laden was a very expert import/export kind of financier and entrepreneur. So moving equipment, moving materials -- honey for one, silver, jewelry, that kind of -- different kinds of jewelry, low-end jewelry, that is a cash kind of only trade. Honey, as you've got here is used throughout the Middle East, very cultural kind of food, very easy to kind of co-locate couriers with those shipments, and it's a very secure message of communication, just slow. That's all.

O'BRIEN: So lots of traffic out there, and the analogy which you like is that of an exploded down pillow. Let's cue the visual aid here. Assume for a minute that you've got the down pillow, and there are the feathers, things floating around, little wafts of information. What is the challenge as you are faced with the feathers?

MCCANN: Well, if you can imagine that, one of these like we see on the screen right now, each one of those feathers representing either a bit of information or a kind of information, either a signal intelligence intercept or an electronic intelligence intercept or a human bit of information.

You can imagine, on the other end of kind of where those feathers are going, how difficult it would be to pluck them out of the ether. And sometimes you hear the analogy of a fire hose. That has a direction, so you would know where to go, the point of impact. The trouble is that in the ether, there is all these bits of information floating around out there and sometimes it's hard to find out where they're aimed.

So the people that we have pulling those pieces of information sometimes get them, then, in a language they don't understand. So they know that it probably came from a suspected person or a region that is in question. Then they have to pass that through a pipeline to people who can actually translate it, which slows the process down. The volume is just incredible -- Miles. O'BRIEN: And then, of course, those of us in journalism are familiar with taking it to another -- maybe even a third source to verify it so that all those feathers kind of come together and you come up with something. And by the time you do all that, of course, it could be a moot issue.

Let's talk a little bit about the flow of information and how it goes. The electronic information, all that information is kind of funneled back to a few key agencies in Washington. Let's -- we have a little diagram here. And NSA, National Security Agency, CIA, FBI intelligence. And then it's sent out to various places. Let's talk about some of these agencies and how that works.

MCCANN: Well, it's collected -- of course, all those agencies you've got on the screen now are collectors, and then it gets collated and then it has to be disseminated to the agencies that are the users of that information or intelligence at that point. When it comes in, it's information and then it becomes intelligence. So then it has to go to both, like, the State Department so they can issue their worldwide warnings as they did the other day on truck bombs here in the U.S. and as they have in the past in different regions of the world. It has to go to the -- now, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and their law enforcement arms, not their counterterrorism arms, and then down to the state and local levels so that those people who are probably most likely to interact with the terrorists here in the U.S. first, the actual beat patrolman, the person that's out there noticing suspicious things has information he can act on.

O'BRIEN: All right. And the final point: state and local agencies, which, as you say, are there on the front lines. But we know that the NSA, the CIA, the FBI is often, for very, very good reason, reluctant to share their information with localities because that could jeopardize some of their assets, human or technological. Basically, the people who need it the most get the least effective intelligence then, right?

MCCANN: Sometimes that's unfortunately the way the system works. The best intelligence is the most sensitive intelligence. And unfortunately, by the time it has to be diluted to people who are users that are uncleared for classified information, it gets diluted to the point where it can have much less effectiveness, and then we see the warnings, which are general in scope, and basically "be aware" or "be alert" or a bulletin that's not necessarily drilled down to the exact kind of information that was the intel report, but generally says to look in this direction or look for these things.

Very, very complicated. And the men and women that purvey this war on terror are to be commended to try to deal with it.

O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, a story of feathers, honey, and fire hoses. Thank you very much for coming in and shedding some light on the world of chatter. We appreciate it.

MCCANN: I can't believe you found a pillow, Miles.

O'BRIEN: We did. Used all our resources.

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







Aired May 21, 2003 - 14:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Baseball and terror make a strange mix, but believe it or not, that is the theme of today's exercise in Miami. The drill at Pro Player Stadium simulates a terrorist attack at a baseball game. It's a grim reality. Susan Candiotti covering the story from there -- hi, Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra. Well, for now, the exercise is all wrapped up. So far, the biggest terrorism drill that's been carried out in South Florida. Certainly not the first, but definitely the biggest -- in 90 degree heat, we might add.

It was designed to see what would happen if something went wrong, horribly wrong, a disaster taking place at a baseball game. In this case, Pro Player Stadium in the northern part of Miami-Dade County. Here was the setup. You had about 7,000 people in the stadium attending a baseball game, Marlins versus Braves. A home run is hit. All the fans, 7,000 in all, inside standing up and cheering when all of a sudden, someone sets off an unknown chemical agent, and this is how it sounded when it was released.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Throw it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: Now, in actuality, there weren't 7,000 baseball fans inside, but 1,000 volunteers posing as victims as they hit the panic button, started running out of the baseball stadium, some of these people ran through what we call decontamination showers. Some were treated here on site. Some are treated off site at local hospitals, and the drill was to answer questions such as how quickly would the rescuers be able to respond. Some 2,500 of them involved in this exercise, and would they be able to catch the bad guy?

Well, let's talk to the man who designed this exercise drill. He's Bill Johnson with the Miami-Dade Fire Department. Well, did you catch the bad guy, No. 1?

BILL JOHNSON, MIAMI-DADE FIRE DEPARTMENT: Yes, we caught the bad guy. As matter of fact, six times we caught him. We repeated that exercise six times.

CANDIOTTI: What did you want to accomplish in this drill, and did you? JOHNSON: We wanted to get all the different agencies that were involved, over 100 of them, to play together, to work together, and work together effectively, and I believe that was really effectively shown here in this exercise, a very successful one.

CANDIOTTI: One of the ones -- one thing we heard from some of the agencies, you're still working on a way to allow everyone to communicate all at the same time. So far, there isn't that single channel. So how do you work around that?

JOHNSON: Well, I believe this exercise really showed that we could communicate very well. The scope of it was massive, and we did very well in communicating. Very little glitches were found.

CANDIOTTI: Can you give us an example of a glitch?

JOHNSON: I don't know offhand because there were six different exercises going on at the same time. There were some interferences here and there, but by and large, I was able to communicate with everybody in the event.

CANDIOTTI: How did everyone bear up under the heat?

JOHNSON: It was hot, but I think everybody did really well. Very few heat casualties.

CANDIOTTI: So if a disaster like this happened...

JOHNSON: I think we are well prepared, and I think this exercise demonstrated that.

CANDIOTTI: All right. Bill Johnson, thank you very much. Of course, he'll be putting together a formal report card, if you will, about how this drill went. That will probably take a few months to put together, but certainly this is the biggest drill they've carried out in this area so far, and with good reason, because, Kyra, remember, we have thousands of miles of unprotected coastline here in Florida. You have a nuclear power plant in this area, seaports, more than one, and airports with thousands and thousands of people coming in from outside the United States.

So there is good reason to protect this area in particular. Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Susan Candiotti. Thank you very much -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Kyra, lately we've been hearing an awful lot about "chatter." And no, we're not talking about a teenager who spends long hours online trying to figure out who will be the next American Idol. We're talking about the term intelligence agencies use to describe communication among terrorists or would-be terrorists, and that communication that is intercepted. So how is it captured, analyzed and ultimately acted upon?

Joining us to talk a little bit about this is our security analyst, Kelly McCann. Kelly, good to have you back. J. KELLY MCCANN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Some of the obvious choices here would be cell phone conversations, computer billboards. Give us a sense of the ways terrorists tend to communicate to cover their tracks.

MCCANN: Well, certainly, with technology as it is today -- I mean, we've got video phones now. You've got numeric codes that can be entered in so that no voice is captured if intercepted. Various kinds of digital photography. There are many, many and more developing every day, ways to communicate, and just as we find and learn about one, they go to another, both being very dynamic forces here on this war on terrorism battlefield.

O'BRIEN: So those fighting terror need to have some technical capability, clearly. There is also, on the other end of it, some low tech ways that messages are transferred around, couriers, and one of the ways we've read about in the past is, for example, the trade in Middle Eastern honey. Why don't you explain some of that?

MCCANN: Absolutely. Well, let's not forget that Osama bin Laden was a very expert import/export kind of financier and entrepreneur. So moving equipment, moving materials -- honey for one, silver, jewelry, that kind of -- different kinds of jewelry, low-end jewelry, that is a cash kind of only trade. Honey, as you've got here is used throughout the Middle East, very cultural kind of food, very easy to kind of co-locate couriers with those shipments, and it's a very secure message of communication, just slow. That's all.

O'BRIEN: So lots of traffic out there, and the analogy which you like is that of an exploded down pillow. Let's cue the visual aid here. Assume for a minute that you've got the down pillow, and there are the feathers, things floating around, little wafts of information. What is the challenge as you are faced with the feathers?

MCCANN: Well, if you can imagine that, one of these like we see on the screen right now, each one of those feathers representing either a bit of information or a kind of information, either a signal intelligence intercept or an electronic intelligence intercept or a human bit of information.

You can imagine, on the other end of kind of where those feathers are going, how difficult it would be to pluck them out of the ether. And sometimes you hear the analogy of a fire hose. That has a direction, so you would know where to go, the point of impact. The trouble is that in the ether, there is all these bits of information floating around out there and sometimes it's hard to find out where they're aimed.

So the people that we have pulling those pieces of information sometimes get them, then, in a language they don't understand. So they know that it probably came from a suspected person or a region that is in question. Then they have to pass that through a pipeline to people who can actually translate it, which slows the process down. The volume is just incredible -- Miles. O'BRIEN: And then, of course, those of us in journalism are familiar with taking it to another -- maybe even a third source to verify it so that all those feathers kind of come together and you come up with something. And by the time you do all that, of course, it could be a moot issue.

Let's talk a little bit about the flow of information and how it goes. The electronic information, all that information is kind of funneled back to a few key agencies in Washington. Let's -- we have a little diagram here. And NSA, National Security Agency, CIA, FBI intelligence. And then it's sent out to various places. Let's talk about some of these agencies and how that works.

MCCANN: Well, it's collected -- of course, all those agencies you've got on the screen now are collectors, and then it gets collated and then it has to be disseminated to the agencies that are the users of that information or intelligence at that point. When it comes in, it's information and then it becomes intelligence. So then it has to go to both, like, the State Department so they can issue their worldwide warnings as they did the other day on truck bombs here in the U.S. and as they have in the past in different regions of the world. It has to go to the -- now, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and their law enforcement arms, not their counterterrorism arms, and then down to the state and local levels so that those people who are probably most likely to interact with the terrorists here in the U.S. first, the actual beat patrolman, the person that's out there noticing suspicious things has information he can act on.

O'BRIEN: All right. And the final point: state and local agencies, which, as you say, are there on the front lines. But we know that the NSA, the CIA, the FBI is often, for very, very good reason, reluctant to share their information with localities because that could jeopardize some of their assets, human or technological. Basically, the people who need it the most get the least effective intelligence then, right?

MCCANN: Sometimes that's unfortunately the way the system works. The best intelligence is the most sensitive intelligence. And unfortunately, by the time it has to be diluted to people who are users that are uncleared for classified information, it gets diluted to the point where it can have much less effectiveness, and then we see the warnings, which are general in scope, and basically "be aware" or "be alert" or a bulletin that's not necessarily drilled down to the exact kind of information that was the intel report, but generally says to look in this direction or look for these things.

Very, very complicated. And the men and women that purvey this war on terror are to be commended to try to deal with it.

O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, a story of feathers, honey, and fire hoses. Thank you very much for coming in and shedding some light on the world of chatter. We appreciate it.

MCCANN: I can't believe you found a pillow, Miles.

O'BRIEN: We did. Used all our resources.

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