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Jihad Against America

Aired June 20, 2003 - 14:00   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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: An Ohio truck driver admits joining Al Qaeda's Jihad against America. Iyman Faris, a naturalized citizen and native of Kashmir, said he met with Osama bin Laden, and plotted attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as a Washington train. He didn't get the job done, and today, New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly is taking some credit for foiling that attack.
CNN's Michael Okwu from New York now, right at the Brooklyn Bridge -- Michael.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, good afternoon to you.

This would have been the major sight of a major terrorist attack on the United States. Now officials say that Faris had been casing the Brooklyn Bridge for a period of time, and that he had been charged with trying to get materials to basically burn through some of the suspension cables here. Officials very concerned, of course, that he would be able to burn through those cables to create some sort of domino effect that would have ultimately brought down the bridge, but structural engineers say this is not an easy task, and in addition to that, the police officials here in New York, Kyra, say that they had marked police cars on both sides of the bridge for a certain period of time, making it that much more difficult from a security standpoint to do this, and that, in fact, Faris had ultimately made the decision that the job would have been way too tough for him to perform.

He contacted some of his Al Qaeda brethren, essentially telling them, -- quote -- "The weather is too hot."

Joining me now is a structural engineer, Kathleen Dunn.

This is not -- without being very specific about how to, obviously, bring a bridge like this down, this is not an easy bridge to bring down.

KATHLEEN DUNN, STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Definitely not an easy bridge to bring down. This was built in -- it was finished in 1883, and the Rovlings (ph), the father, son and wife, of course, had practiced on other bridges before they built this one. So they were at the top of their game, if you will, when they put this together.

OKWU: What makes it such a stable structure?

DUNN: Well, for one thing, the apartments (ph) and the towers are stone. They're down to very solid material. At the bottom, they are very solid themselves, no cavities. The cabling system has many, many layers, and much of what we call redundancy, which means there is more than one piece doing every bit of work. So you'd have to remove a lot of it in order do something bad here.

OKWU: Now one of the thing officials are saying, is that they have the bridge manned. They have security outposts and surveillance all the time. Imagine if there was no surveillance, or that it was lax for a certain period of time. If someone had a consistent period of time to work on that, could they bring the bridge down?

DUNN: They would actually need a really long period of time, and I think with the pedestrians and the cars going by, they would have to be very, very visible at what they did.

OKWU: Just very quickly, historically, why is this an important bridge in New York City?

DUNN: Well, as we said, 1883, it was the first crossing between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and structural engineers the world over revere that it's one of the most beautiful bridges ever built.

OKWU: Do you have any sense of how many people use the bridge every day?

DUNN: It has to be hundreds of thousands daily, doesn't it. I've sat in on it in traffic plenty of times.

OKWU: Kathleen, thank you very much for joining us.

DUNN: My pleasure.

OKWU: And just to give the viewers at home a sense of the landscape here in New York. Obviously, Al Qaeda has been very focused on some of the landmarks, and just across the way on the east river here, just a stone throw from the Brooklyn Bridge, is where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center used to stand.

Back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Wow. You sort of look at that picture, and it moves you.

Michael Okwu, thank you.

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 June 20, 2003 - 14:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: An Ohio truck driver admits joining Al Qaeda's Jihad against America. Iyman Faris, a naturalized citizen and native of Kashmir, said he met with Osama bin Laden, and plotted attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as a Washington train. He didn't get the job done, and today, New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly is taking some credit for foiling that attack.
CNN's Michael Okwu from New York now, right at the Brooklyn Bridge -- Michael.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, good afternoon to you.

This would have been the major sight of a major terrorist attack on the United States. Now officials say that Faris had been casing the Brooklyn Bridge for a period of time, and that he had been charged with trying to get materials to basically burn through some of the suspension cables here. Officials very concerned, of course, that he would be able to burn through those cables to create some sort of domino effect that would have ultimately brought down the bridge, but structural engineers say this is not an easy task, and in addition to that, the police officials here in New York, Kyra, say that they had marked police cars on both sides of the bridge for a certain period of time, making it that much more difficult from a security standpoint to do this, and that, in fact, Faris had ultimately made the decision that the job would have been way too tough for him to perform.

He contacted some of his Al Qaeda brethren, essentially telling them, -- quote -- "The weather is too hot."

Joining me now is a structural engineer, Kathleen Dunn.

This is not -- without being very specific about how to, obviously, bring a bridge like this down, this is not an easy bridge to bring down.

KATHLEEN DUNN, STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: Definitely not an easy bridge to bring down. This was built in -- it was finished in 1883, and the Rovlings (ph), the father, son and wife, of course, had practiced on other bridges before they built this one. So they were at the top of their game, if you will, when they put this together.

OKWU: What makes it such a stable structure?

DUNN: Well, for one thing, the apartments (ph) and the towers are stone. They're down to very solid material. At the bottom, they are very solid themselves, no cavities. The cabling system has many, many layers, and much of what we call redundancy, which means there is more than one piece doing every bit of work. So you'd have to remove a lot of it in order do something bad here.

OKWU: Now one of the thing officials are saying, is that they have the bridge manned. They have security outposts and surveillance all the time. Imagine if there was no surveillance, or that it was lax for a certain period of time. If someone had a consistent period of time to work on that, could they bring the bridge down?

DUNN: They would actually need a really long period of time, and I think with the pedestrians and the cars going by, they would have to be very, very visible at what they did.

OKWU: Just very quickly, historically, why is this an important bridge in New York City?

DUNN: Well, as we said, 1883, it was the first crossing between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and structural engineers the world over revere that it's one of the most beautiful bridges ever built.

OKWU: Do you have any sense of how many people use the bridge every day?

DUNN: It has to be hundreds of thousands daily, doesn't it. I've sat in on it in traffic plenty of times.

OKWU: Kathleen, thank you very much for joining us.

DUNN: My pleasure.

OKWU: And just to give the viewers at home a sense of the landscape here in New York. Obviously, Al Qaeda has been very focused on some of the landmarks, and just across the way on the east river here, just a stone throw from the Brooklyn Bridge, is where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center used to stand.

Back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Wow. You sort of look at that picture, and it moves you.

Michael Okwu, thank you.

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