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Analysis With Ken Robinson

Aired December 15, 2003 - 13:47   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: Let's join Ken Robinson live now to talk about the hunt for exactly what happened there in the Tikrit region and talk a little bit about what is next for U.S. forces as they continue trying to fill out that deck of cards.
First of all, let's talk about the ace in the hole, Ken Robinson. I want to orient our vowers. We've got some satellite imagery together to give them sense of where exactly this took place. Let's go to that right now.

We'll bring you down to Iraq to Aldar. Ken, based on what we know, they got this information in the morning. They heard Aldar was the place, south of Tikrit. There were two checkpoints, one of them called Wolverine One, which was located here. And the other one Wolverine Two, these were the two spots where they thought it was most likely.

They went there, got additional intelligence, cordoned off a two- mile square area which led them ultimately to this location here, these outbuildings there are precisely where Saddam Hussein was found.

Great textbook case of taking intelligence and working with it quickly, isn't?

KEN ROBINSON, CNN NATL. SECURITY ANALYST: This is amazing. And the viewers need to consider this. Everyone's familiar with a Rubik's Cube. Imagine if you had a Rubik's Cube and you were blindfolded and you were running down road and you are being shot at. And you're trying to line up the colors together.

That's kind of the effort that it takes to bring one of these together. This army that is prosecuting this campaign right now learned a lot of lessons learned from the Afghanistan campaigns and their big watch word is better, cheaper faster.

And they want to have agility, depth, synchronization of all their assets. And so they very rapidly have tailored their intelligence apparatus so that U.S. forces that are conventional and U.S. forces that are unconventional can work side by side, each capitalizing on each other's strengths to very rapidly move after actionable intelligence when they get it.

Because, remember, they've gotten close to him several times in the past. There's been 60 of these type of operations conducted very recently and this one finally gave them the holy grail.

O'BRIEN: Well faster, better, cheaper didn't work so well for NASA. What are the pitfalls in all this? You're talking about longstanding rivalries, and particularly in the case with intelligence, a desire to keep things close to the vest for obvious reasons.

ROBINSON: Operational security is a really important thing. The people that they're facing there right now, the enemies that they're facing are multiple. The people that I'm talking to are telling me, you know, it's great that we finally got Saddam out of the way because of the psychological impact of him being out on the run had on a certain area of the population.

But remember, there are former regime Ba'athists, there is Ansar al Islam in the north, there are Wahabbists coming across the boarder from Saudi Arabia. And then foreign fighters.

And it's not necessary that each of these groups is connected or will be impacted by this man's capture. So they still have to stay in the game. They have a long work ahead of them to make sure that they can reduce this threat of these attacks against the coalition so they can get back to the business of reconstruction.

O'BRIEN: So we shouldn't overstate the significance of this from a real on the ground tactical nature.

Let's talk for just a moment about who might have dimed him out. Obviously, somebody got very close to the inner circle here because clearly, Saddam Hussein was not seeing a lot of people beyond the most trusted of people.

Any thoughts on who it might be and along with that, who is still at large, who would be in the inner circle?

ROBINSON: Well, what the intelligence community needs to be commended for is the fact that just as the enemy adapts every day so do they.

And what they did was they sat back and reorganized everything that they were looking at. And the they started focusing on low-level family members, friends, relatives, acquaintances and people who owned property. And from that they were peeling the onion one layer at a time.

And from that forensic look and then raids and interviews with people, it led to a piece of information that led to another piece of information. Again, taking the Rubik's Cube and lining up the colors. And from that they were able to find out.

And there's -- it's clearly that someone very close to Saddam that was facilitating him helped in this regard. It could have come possibly from the Al-Douri's -- detention of his family two weeks ago. There's no way to know for sure until the public information is released by the United States government.

But it's a remarkable use of intelligence and analysis. And the synergistic use of conventional and Special Operations forces to achieve the objectives. O'BRIEN: Wouldn't that be interesting if the next shoe to drop is they announce, Yes, we've had Al-Douri for quite some time and he's been talking. That would be very interesting. We'll bring you back to bat that one around.

Ken Robinson, thanks very much always for your insights.

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 December 15, 2003 - 13:47   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's join Ken Robinson live now to talk about the hunt for exactly what happened there in the Tikrit region and talk a little bit about what is next for U.S. forces as they continue trying to fill out that deck of cards.
First of all, let's talk about the ace in the hole, Ken Robinson. I want to orient our vowers. We've got some satellite imagery together to give them sense of where exactly this took place. Let's go to that right now.

We'll bring you down to Iraq to Aldar. Ken, based on what we know, they got this information in the morning. They heard Aldar was the place, south of Tikrit. There were two checkpoints, one of them called Wolverine One, which was located here. And the other one Wolverine Two, these were the two spots where they thought it was most likely.

They went there, got additional intelligence, cordoned off a two- mile square area which led them ultimately to this location here, these outbuildings there are precisely where Saddam Hussein was found.

Great textbook case of taking intelligence and working with it quickly, isn't?

KEN ROBINSON, CNN NATL. SECURITY ANALYST: This is amazing. And the viewers need to consider this. Everyone's familiar with a Rubik's Cube. Imagine if you had a Rubik's Cube and you were blindfolded and you were running down road and you are being shot at. And you're trying to line up the colors together.

That's kind of the effort that it takes to bring one of these together. This army that is prosecuting this campaign right now learned a lot of lessons learned from the Afghanistan campaigns and their big watch word is better, cheaper faster.

And they want to have agility, depth, synchronization of all their assets. And so they very rapidly have tailored their intelligence apparatus so that U.S. forces that are conventional and U.S. forces that are unconventional can work side by side, each capitalizing on each other's strengths to very rapidly move after actionable intelligence when they get it.

Because, remember, they've gotten close to him several times in the past. There's been 60 of these type of operations conducted very recently and this one finally gave them the holy grail.

O'BRIEN: Well faster, better, cheaper didn't work so well for NASA. What are the pitfalls in all this? You're talking about longstanding rivalries, and particularly in the case with intelligence, a desire to keep things close to the vest for obvious reasons.

ROBINSON: Operational security is a really important thing. The people that they're facing there right now, the enemies that they're facing are multiple. The people that I'm talking to are telling me, you know, it's great that we finally got Saddam out of the way because of the psychological impact of him being out on the run had on a certain area of the population.

But remember, there are former regime Ba'athists, there is Ansar al Islam in the north, there are Wahabbists coming across the boarder from Saudi Arabia. And then foreign fighters.

And it's not necessary that each of these groups is connected or will be impacted by this man's capture. So they still have to stay in the game. They have a long work ahead of them to make sure that they can reduce this threat of these attacks against the coalition so they can get back to the business of reconstruction.

O'BRIEN: So we shouldn't overstate the significance of this from a real on the ground tactical nature.

Let's talk for just a moment about who might have dimed him out. Obviously, somebody got very close to the inner circle here because clearly, Saddam Hussein was not seeing a lot of people beyond the most trusted of people.

Any thoughts on who it might be and along with that, who is still at large, who would be in the inner circle?

ROBINSON: Well, what the intelligence community needs to be commended for is the fact that just as the enemy adapts every day so do they.

And what they did was they sat back and reorganized everything that they were looking at. And the they started focusing on low-level family members, friends, relatives, acquaintances and people who owned property. And from that they were peeling the onion one layer at a time.

And from that forensic look and then raids and interviews with people, it led to a piece of information that led to another piece of information. Again, taking the Rubik's Cube and lining up the colors. And from that they were able to find out.

And there's -- it's clearly that someone very close to Saddam that was facilitating him helped in this regard. It could have come possibly from the Al-Douri's -- detention of his family two weeks ago. There's no way to know for sure until the public information is released by the United States government.

But it's a remarkable use of intelligence and analysis. And the synergistic use of conventional and Special Operations forces to achieve the objectives. O'BRIEN: Wouldn't that be interesting if the next shoe to drop is they announce, Yes, we've had Al-Douri for quite some time and he's been talking. That would be very interesting. We'll bring you back to bat that one around.

Ken Robinson, thanks very much always for your insights.

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