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Videotape Appears to Document First Insurgent Attack on Civilian Aircraft

Aired November 25, 2003 - 13:14   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN is among some news organizations scrutinizing a videotape today that appears to document the first insurgent attack on a civilian aircraft in Iraq.
CNN's David Ensor is live from Washington with the details. It's not really that clear-cut, though, is it, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, it's not, Miles.

This videotape is interesting, but it raises a lot of questions and doesn't answer them, at least not on the videotape.

Let's take a look. What you see first -- and this is a tape that was given to a French journalist in Baghdad -- is a group of men, some of them holding RPGs and shoulder-launched missiles, standing around on the ground here. The assumption is, this is in the Baghdad airport area, because we do see here in the video, we see an American helicopter flying overhead. And further on into the videotape, one of the men fires a shoulder-launched missile into the air. I think we can show you that in just a second here. That's at launch.

Now the thing is the videotape, you see it going up towards what looks like a contrail of a jet, possibly, or some kind of a cloud. We do not see it hit anything. And later on in the videotape, we see what I -- if we can bring that up now, we see an aircraft, which, if you slow down and freeze frame as we've done, you can see the plane appears to have been hit and there is a little bit of damage and some smoke coming off of the plane.

Now this could be the incident that occurred on Saturday, a DHL cargo plane was hit right after takeoff from Baghdad Airport, and returned to that airport safely. A fire had to be put out. This could be that incident, and may well be. But you can't tell from the videotape whether that firing really is the one that hits the plane. You can't tell where the videotape was made. It raises a lot of questions. One of them, of course, is why is this videotape being given to a journalist? And thus distributed to the world.

The journalist in question, Sarah Daniel, of the "Nouvel Observateur" says she believes these insurgents, and they are -- she has been talking to some of the insurgent groups that have been attacking American forces, gave her the videotape in the hopes that it would be publicized so they can show the people giving them money to make these attacks that they are successfully attacking an American aircraft, and she said we could expect more such attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARA DANIEL, "NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR": The groups I met are Iraqis. They're small groups, they're not well organized. Sometimes, they run into each other doing operations, and they have a lot of weapons, lots and lots of weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: They also have a videotape machine and, clearly, they are using it -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, a couple thoughts here, David. First of all, that incident with that DHL jet, regardless of what we saw in that videotape, it is believed it was struck by a shoulder-fired heat seeking missile, correct?

ENSOR: That's correct. And there are, in fact, still pictures that show that quite clearly from Saturday. So that incident occurred. Whether that is this incident or not, it looks like it, but we can't really tell from the videotape.

O'BRIEN: All right, and the pictures that exist, that we know to be the DHL aircraft, do they seem to match the videotape we saw there?

ENSOR: Roughly speaking, they do, yes.

O'BRIEN: All right, and there's nothing in that video that I saw that marries those two pieces of video, the launching and then the picture that aircraft, which apparently was struck by something. So it kind of leaves you at an impasse, doesn't it?

ENSOR: It does. I mean, those of us who work in videotape know how easy it is to make something to look like something it's not. And a missile launch could be taking place at one place and a plane having some problems could be from another place altogether. So we really -- Since there are video edits on the sequence that was released, we really don't know what exactly this videotape is.

But on the face of it, it looks like this attack on the DHL aircraft -- and as I said, the journalists who got it, at least, believes it's all part of this sort of propaganda war that's going on alongside the low-scale warfare that's going on in Iraq.

O'BRIEN: And a quick final thought, those shoulder-fired missiles, does it appear to be old Soviet weapons, those SAs?

ENSOR: It looks like a SAM-7 shoulder-launched missile, heat- seeking missile, sort of an old Soviet, slightly more primitive version of the American stinger.

O'BRIEN: All right, David Ensor, thanks very much for trying to shed some light on that for us. We do appreciate it.

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




Civilian Aircraft>


Aired November 25, 2003 - 13:14   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN is among some news organizations scrutinizing a videotape today that appears to document the first insurgent attack on a civilian aircraft in Iraq.
CNN's David Ensor is live from Washington with the details. It's not really that clear-cut, though, is it, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, it's not, Miles.

This videotape is interesting, but it raises a lot of questions and doesn't answer them, at least not on the videotape.

Let's take a look. What you see first -- and this is a tape that was given to a French journalist in Baghdad -- is a group of men, some of them holding RPGs and shoulder-launched missiles, standing around on the ground here. The assumption is, this is in the Baghdad airport area, because we do see here in the video, we see an American helicopter flying overhead. And further on into the videotape, one of the men fires a shoulder-launched missile into the air. I think we can show you that in just a second here. That's at launch.

Now the thing is the videotape, you see it going up towards what looks like a contrail of a jet, possibly, or some kind of a cloud. We do not see it hit anything. And later on in the videotape, we see what I -- if we can bring that up now, we see an aircraft, which, if you slow down and freeze frame as we've done, you can see the plane appears to have been hit and there is a little bit of damage and some smoke coming off of the plane.

Now this could be the incident that occurred on Saturday, a DHL cargo plane was hit right after takeoff from Baghdad Airport, and returned to that airport safely. A fire had to be put out. This could be that incident, and may well be. But you can't tell from the videotape whether that firing really is the one that hits the plane. You can't tell where the videotape was made. It raises a lot of questions. One of them, of course, is why is this videotape being given to a journalist? And thus distributed to the world.

The journalist in question, Sarah Daniel, of the "Nouvel Observateur" says she believes these insurgents, and they are -- she has been talking to some of the insurgent groups that have been attacking American forces, gave her the videotape in the hopes that it would be publicized so they can show the people giving them money to make these attacks that they are successfully attacking an American aircraft, and she said we could expect more such attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARA DANIEL, "NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR": The groups I met are Iraqis. They're small groups, they're not well organized. Sometimes, they run into each other doing operations, and they have a lot of weapons, lots and lots of weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: They also have a videotape machine and, clearly, they are using it -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, a couple thoughts here, David. First of all, that incident with that DHL jet, regardless of what we saw in that videotape, it is believed it was struck by a shoulder-fired heat seeking missile, correct?

ENSOR: That's correct. And there are, in fact, still pictures that show that quite clearly from Saturday. So that incident occurred. Whether that is this incident or not, it looks like it, but we can't really tell from the videotape.

O'BRIEN: All right, and the pictures that exist, that we know to be the DHL aircraft, do they seem to match the videotape we saw there?

ENSOR: Roughly speaking, they do, yes.

O'BRIEN: All right, and there's nothing in that video that I saw that marries those two pieces of video, the launching and then the picture that aircraft, which apparently was struck by something. So it kind of leaves you at an impasse, doesn't it?

ENSOR: It does. I mean, those of us who work in videotape know how easy it is to make something to look like something it's not. And a missile launch could be taking place at one place and a plane having some problems could be from another place altogether. So we really -- Since there are video edits on the sequence that was released, we really don't know what exactly this videotape is.

But on the face of it, it looks like this attack on the DHL aircraft -- and as I said, the journalists who got it, at least, believes it's all part of this sort of propaganda war that's going on alongside the low-scale warfare that's going on in Iraq.

O'BRIEN: And a quick final thought, those shoulder-fired missiles, does it appear to be old Soviet weapons, those SAs?

ENSOR: It looks like a SAM-7 shoulder-launched missile, heat- seeking missile, sort of an old Soviet, slightly more primitive version of the American stinger.

O'BRIEN: All right, David Ensor, thanks very much for trying to shed some light on that for us. We do appreciate it.

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




Civilian Aircraft>