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Police Look for Clues to Second Wave of Attacks

Aired July 21, 2005 - 15:00   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: "Now in the News," confident and defiant: Saddam Hussein back in court challenges the judge, ridicules Iraqi's new government and demands better access to his lawyers. The former dictator faces a host of war crime charges.
Closed before it opened: Drug enforcement agents have sealed this tunnel which runs from British Columbia into Washington state. It moved in yesterday after watching suspected drug smugglers built the tunnel over the past eight months. Three men have been arrested.

Family first. Judge John Roberts, nominated to the nation's highest court, began his day taking the kids to camp. Taking it back to Capitol Hill and meetings with some of his biggest Democratic critics later. Early word is the lawyer turned judge will not face a filibuster.

Qualified sighs of relief in London. No one was killed in today's attempted bombings, but there are also unnerving reports that police found some of the devices unexploded. Here's a look at which Underground stations were targeted today. Are here in red are the stations which saw the fatal attacks two weeks ago.

We're continuing to follow every aspect of this developing story from the ground in London. Let's start with Robin Oakley at 10 Downing Street for response by the prime minister.

Go ahead, Robin.

ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tony Blair heard the news when he was with John Howard, the visiting Australian prime minister, and he immediately appealed to Londoners to show calm. He didn't want to minimize, he said, the fears and alarm that people would feel at this apparent second wave of terrorist attacks, but he said it won't change us. It won't change the way we live our lives.

And he ordered -- he urged everybody to go about their lives in as normal as way as they possibly could.

He himself had a meeting, first of all, with his COBR emergency committee, with security and police chiefs (AUDIO GAP) to the normal business. And ironically, that normal business today included a meeting of security chiefs and police to advise him on what legislative changes might be needed following the terrorist attacks of a fortnight ago.

We don't know whether any new measures will come out of that meeting but British parliamentarians disappeared today for 80 days of holiday. Some criticism of that, so Mr. Blair's advisors said that he would be prepared to recall Parliament if police and security chiefs come up with some urgent proposals for legislation which needs quick action -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Robin, also Tony Blair saying he was going to talk more with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf about the fact that the bombers that died two weeks ago were of Pakistani origin. Has that gone forward? Has there been any more discussions?

OAKLEY: No, he's had conversations with Pervez Musharraf, who has agreed that he will look at the madrasas, the religious schools in Pakistan, which British authorities fear are used as a cover for terrorist godfathers to inspire young Muslims to further acts of terrorism.

But in a sense, it was General Musharraf today who was saying actually there's a lot that needs doing in Britain, too. It's not just a question of whether these people were masterminded by somebody of Pakistani origin -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Robin Oakley at 10 Downing Street. Thanks, Robin.

And once again Londoners themselves come face-to-face with the realities of terrorism once again. Here's how a number of them reacted today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, it's worrying, because you know you never know. You didn't think two weeks later it would happen again. When we heard all the police sirens go by, I work in Booth (ph), so I heard the sirens go by. And that seems a lot for, you know, an afternoon. And then, of course, the policemen came and said everybody evacuate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not really worried, but we're not reading the paper on Sunday, the news of the world. We were told it was going to be more, and look what's happened. Two weeks to the day, there is more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm concerned for safety. I live a minute up that way. I work a minute down that way, and this is my home, so it's just taking it on the chin. So, you know, what's going to change in the future? Is it going to happen again? You are going to have to make changes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And Mallika Kapur has also been following the attacks that have taken place in London. She's joining us now from Shepherd's Bush Station with reaction from there -- Mallika.

MALLIKA KAPUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, there. I'm at the Shepherd's Bush Tube Station, and recently, police have confirmed that this is the scene of one of the four attacks that took place on London's public transport system today. Four attacks took place on the public transport system. Three of them on the Underground station, one of them on a bus, a bus traveling on Hackney Road.

Now, one of the blasts took place at the tube station behind me, Shepherd's Bush Tube Station. Authorities have so far not confirmed who is behind the blast. Nor have they confirmed what exactly caused the blast.

The sources here on the ground have been telling us that they think it was a small blast, and a small blast that was probably caused by a detonator going off and not by a bomb blast.

Earlier on this entire area around me was cordoned off, and the road in front of me was blocked off, but a few hours ago police have removed the police cordon on the main roads surrounding this area, and traffic is flowing freely. Residents who have evacuated from this area have been allowed to come home. Businesses that were shut in the afternoon have reopened, and it's looking like things are slowly getting back to normal.

PHILLIPS: Mallika Kapur, thank you so much.

Let's talk more and go a little bit more in depth here. And tag team terror attacks apparently fall short, but it rattles an already agitated London, and sparks concerns elsewhere, including the United States, when and where the next strike might come.

CNN's terror analyst Peter Bergen joins us now from Washington to talk about the challenge of fighting an elusive enemy.

And Peter, we've been talking to so many various guests today, but this is your expertise. You study al Qaeda. You study terrorism. A lot of people sitting back here in the United States saying OK, we're seeing it in Afghanistan and in Iraq and now London. When is it going to happen in the United States?

Can you give us a reality check?

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERROR ANALYST: Well, I mean, the threat in the United States is obviously much lower than it was before 9/11, because we've taken so many measures to secure, you know, aircraft and to some degree secure our borders.

And I think there's an interesting thing, you know, the American dream sort of works. I think that people, second generation Muslims in this country become dentists. They don't volunteer to go and fight in Kashmir, as we've seen hundreds of British second generation Muslims going to get training in Pakistan, getting involved with Kashmiri militant groups.

When we know more about these London attacks, I can guarantee you that we'll find out that these guys hooked up with some one of the Kashmiri militant outfits, because where would they get the training to build these kinds of very sophisticated explosives? They had to have some training from a terrorist group with operations in Pakistan, in my view.

Now, we're not seeing that in the United States. We have seen one example in the United States of a second generation American Muslim traveling to Pakistan after 9/11. The government alleges that he trained at some sort of training camp. You may remember the case in Lodai, California, some months back. But this is kind of exceptional.

And so I am much less concerned about American sleeper cells that might come do damage inside the United States than people coming from outside. And we've seen again and again, you know, Richard Reid the so-called shoe bomber who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight between Paris and Miami, he's a British citizen. He was coming in from outside.

The 9/11 attacks, everybody came from outside, a lot of the people who were involved in the 9/11 attacks only spent a few months. The so-called muscle hijackers only spent a few months here. And of course, the pilots in the 9/11 plot got radicalized in Hamburg, Germany.

So you know, I think the threat is really, as we keep seeing in Europe now, there is a big -- rather large pool of disaffected young Muslim men who get radicalized, I think, by sudden -- a rather small number of radical clerics, who are giving them this message of hatred and saying it's OK to go and conduct acts of terrorism against innocent civilians.

And unfortunately, that's going to continue, I think. The British are still going to take some steps that's going to make that much harder. It's going to be -- I think they're going to make it a crime to encourage acts of terrorism, which right now it isn't. I think they may expel one or two of the more egregious clerics back to their home countries.

But it takes the bombs before these measures are taken. And unfortunately, that's sort of closing the barn door after the -- you know, after the event has happened.

PHILLIPS: Peter, one of our military analysts brought up, too, the fact that, well, it happened in London because Muslims can blend in a little easier in London, that now this is going to bring up talk about visa policies, E.U. passports. Do you agree with that?

BERGEN: I wrote a piece in the "New York Times" basically laying that out about we have a program called the visa waiver program.

PHILLIPS: Peter, I should have read that. I would like you to e-mail that to me, forgive me.

BERGEN: No, that's OK. I basically, a day after the London terror attacks, I said, you know, we have this visa waiver program with most European countries, and it's a very good program. We don't want to fix it in any -- you know, damage our relation with our allies. But the fact is you don't need a face-to-face interview to get a visa to come into this country if you're British citizens, Spanish citizen, German citizen, whatever. And we've seen again and again that members of al Qaeda have European passports.

So you just have to ask yourself the question, you know, is enough being done to make sure that these people aren't getting in? And one proposal that the House International Relations Committee is looking at is extending some of our border posts out to other countries.

And there was a pilot program that's going to happen in Shannon, in Ireland, where you will clear customs in Ireland. It will be a piece of sovereign American territory at Chernon (ph) Airport. And so you won't even be able to get into the country without actually having encountered a U.S. customs official at your point of departure, and that may be extended to other airports around the world, Frankfurt, Heathrow.

Obviously, these are complicated things to set up, but it can be also -- it can be sold as a convenience. You know, who likes clearing customs after a long transatlantic flight. If you could do that at your point of departure, it would also be a convenience not only a safety measure.

PHILLIPS: Now, the last time you and I talked about terrorist attacks, and we were talking about Iraq specifically, you talked about Pakistan. You talked about the border. You talked about Musharraf and how things need to be taken on a more aggressive manner, the fact that OBL could still be being protected somehow in Pakistan.

Now here we go with these attacks in London, and once again, Tony Blair coming forward, saying, "Well, I've had a discussion with Pervez Musharraf. Three of these suspects that died two weeks ago were from Pakistani decent."

It seems like there has to be more action on behalf of a number of -- well, the U.S. and a number of allied countries with Pakistan.

BERGEN: Well, if I was the Pakistani official answering your question, Kyra, I would say, look, we're doing a lot. Hundreds of our guys have been killed in the fight against al Qaeda. The president himself has survived two very serious assassination attempts post-9/11 because of his role in the war on terrorism. We've arrested people. We've closed certain groups down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But the fact remains that these Kashmir militant groups are continuing to thrive. I think they change their names, and when they get banned they change their names. People get arrested and then they, you know, they kind of cycle out of prison. And it's tough.

And President Musharraf, I think, is personally determined. He's actually called for a jihad against the terrorists, a holy war against the terrorists, both in Pakistan and elsewhere. And he's doing what he can. But, you know, it's a country -- I'll give you a for instance. Lashkar e Tayyaba, which is the largest Kashmiri militant group, has 2,200 offices around the country in Pakistan. When it has its annual rallies, hundreds of thousands of people show up. So these are generally popular groups.

And the Kashmir issue is a generally popular issue in Pakistan. People feel in Pakistan, we want Kashmir. We are prepared to tolerate these Kashmiri militant groups.

Unfortunately, there's a huge blow back for us, because you know, I'm pretty sure that the London bombers in the July 7 attack will have learned their skills with these Kashmiri militant groups.

PHILLIPS: And we'll be following more with Peter Bergen. Thank you so much.

BERGEN: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Still ahead keeping an eye on those terrorists. Just ahead, the lessons Londoners have learned from years of attacks about how to watch for trouble on a busy city street and the financial impact of today's attacks. We're going to see how Wall Street is reacting.

Also, Jason Carroll going to be joining us, also live from New York, talking about if you are traveling on public transportation, more than likely your bag is going to get checked today. We'll have more right after this.

ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This week in history on July 23, 1967, a riot with racial overtones broke out on Detroit's 12th street. It took federal troops and the National Guard five days to quell the disturbance. Forty-three people died.

NEIL ARMSTRONG, ASTRONAUT: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

ANNOUNCER: In 1969, Neil Armstrong, who commanded the Apollo 11 mission, became the first person to walk on the moon.

And in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police arrested serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer on July 22, 1991. He was later sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms.

That is this week in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: The London bombings have gotten many cities thinking hard about the safety of their transportation systems. In New York, travelers riding buses and trains will soon face random police searches of their bags and backpacks.

Jason Carroll has the details for us now, live from New York.

Jason, is it happening already?

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, the way we understand it, these random searches will begin starting tomorrow. So anyone who rides a New York City subway is subject to having their backpack or their purse, whatever the case may be, searched.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, along with Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki made the announcement today. Kelly said the searches would be done in a, quote, "reasonable and a common sense way." He would not put a specific number on how many people will be searched each day. He did say that the officers do have a protocol in their head in which to operate under.

Kelly then described how and where these searches will take place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAY KELLY, NEW YORK POLICE COMMISSIONER: Essentially, it will be before you enter the system. You know, ideally, it will be before you go through the turnstile. You know, you have a right to turn around and leave. But we also reserve the right to do those types of searches if, in fact, someone is already inside the system. And in essence the protocol is focused on people entering the system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: And Kyra, as you saw from some of the video there, police here in New York City had already ratcheted up security on the city's subways and trains by adding additional police, bomb sniffing dogs. They also added police patrols in other areas surrounding the subway station.

And Kyra, they also gave officers some points to talk to the public about in terms of how to spot a terrorist.

In terms of these random searches, we're told once again that they will begin tomorrow and will be in place indefinitely -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. We'll talk about it again tomorrow, then, Jason. Thank you so much.

CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. Stay tuned to CNN for the latest information day and night.

Prime Minister Tony Blair says terrorists failed in their mission today. Four attempted bombings at the height of rush hour targeted three trains in the London Underground and a double-decker bus. Blair says the intention must have been to kill. But fortunately, no one was killed and only one person injured.

Scotland Yard has ruled out any trace of chemical agents at the site. But police say investigators are examining evidence found at the scene which they hope will be very helpful.

Londoners are no strangers to terrorism. Even before the recent train bombings, the city spent decades in the cross hairs of the Irish Republican Army, and London authorities have long been using some eyes in the sky to keep watch over the city. David Ensor takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the 1980s the IRA began a bombing campaign aimed first at the leaders of the country. They almost succeeded in killing Prime Minister Thatcher and her cabinet.

ASST. COMM. MIKE BOWRON, LONDON POLICE: And then later on that day the IRA issued a statement which went along the lines of, "Today you were lucky but just remember you've got to be lucky all of the time. We only have to be lucky once." And I quietly repeat that mantra to myself every day.

ENSOR: Mike Bowron is the assistant commissioner of the City of London Police.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are we doing?

ENSOR: His force is charged with guarding Britain's economic heart, which was the IRA's target in the early 1990s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a bomb at Bishop's Gate Road. This is not a hoax.

ENSOR: The first step, make London's financial hub easier to defend. Over a hundred streets leading into the city were reduced to what is now less than 20.

BOWRON: See if we can zoom in on it.

ENSOR: New technologies were deployed, especially closed circuit TV cameras, used first in Belfast, cameras that soon became omnipresent as both government and business bought them by the thousands.

(on camera) Walking along this street or any street in the city of London, one thing is almost certain. You're on camera. A person living and working here can expect to be filmed dozens of times each day, either by police or by privately-run surveillance cameras.

An independent closed circuit operator's group estimates that Britain has at least half a million live cameras. That's one for every 120 people.

Are there people here who regard that as an intrusion?

BOWRON: No, I think by and large the public of Britain realize that those cameras are actually discriminating against thieves, potential terrorists.

DAME STELLA RIMINGTON, FORMER DIRECTOR, MI-5: Most people understand that these things are there to help sort of protect them against serious threats.

ENSOR (voice-over): Dame Stella Rimington was the director of MI-5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, which fights terrorism by spying on Britons far more extensively than the FBI does in the U.S.

(on camera) Where would you say the line is drawn in this country in that age-old debate between how much security you have and how much liberty you're allowed ?

RIMINGTON: Yes, I think the line -- the line is moving. More of our civil liberties are being intruded upon as the government takes responsibility for trying to look after us.

David Ensor, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Keeping an eye on Wall Street. We're going to have a check of the markets right after a quick break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: A quick check on Wall Street. Susan Lisovicz at the New York Stock Exchange -- Susan.

(STOCK REPORT)

PHILLIPS: All right, Susan, see you tomorrow. That wraps up this edition of LIVE FROM. Now here's Candy Crowley with a preview of what's ahead on "INSIDE POLITICS."

Hi, Candy.

CANDY CROWLEY, HOST "INSIDE POLITICS": Hey, Kyra. Thanks so much.

Two weeks after those deadly London bombings, new blasts spread fear among Britons. Coming up, we'll take a look at what Washington is doing to try to prevent such attacks from happening here in the U.S.

Plus as Judge John Roberts makes the rounds on Capitol Hill, we ask do you think he's the right choice to serve on the Supreme Court? We'll take a look at some new poll numbers.

All this and much more when I go "INSIDE POLITICS" in two minutes. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: London on edge. Police report four attempted explosions on London's transit system today. There were no fatalities. Investigators say it's too early to say who's responsible or if these attacks are connected to London's deadly terror attacks two weeks ago. Stay with CNN for the latest information.

An aging but confident Saddam Hussein ridicules the Iraqi government and complains about access to an attorney for a court proceeding that took place today. This footage was aired on Al Arabiya TV and also was released to CNN.

Federal agents plug a tunnel running beneath the U.S.-Canadian border and arrests at least three people. Canadian and U.S. law enforcement have been monitoring construction of the elaborate tunnel. They say it took nearly a year to build and allegedly was being used for illegal drug trafficking.

I'll see you tomorrow. Now here's Candy Crowley with "INSIDE POLITICS."

END

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