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American Morning

Risks Analyst Says Little Ordinary Americans Can Do About Terrorism

Aired May 30, 2001 - 10:13   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: These are just the latest in a series of terrorism cases. Authorities are still trying to track accused terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. Joining us now to talk more about that is Bill Daly. He is with Control Risks Group, that is an international consulting that specializes in political and security risk analysis.

Good morning, thanks for joining us.

BILL DALY, CONTROL RISKS GROUP: Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: First of all, what do you think the message is that these verdicts send to terrorists and especially the Taleban.

DALY: Well, certainly these convictions are key in the fact that they send a strong message that the United States will not stand for terrorist acts committed against it soil, its personnel, its facilities and that just will prevail. It also goes to show you there is a commitment, an ongoing commitment to fight terrorism on all fronts.

KAGAN: For the first time today, a jury from a U.S. federal court will consider the death penalty against foreign terrorists for targeting Americans abroad. Do you expect there to be some kind of retribution or at least plans for retribution for this action?

DALY: You know, that's always the concern, Daryn, whenever you have conviction of terrorist that you have people -- there may be backlashes or the followers doing something in order to make them more of martyrs to try to sway the fact that we may be considering the death penalty.

But the bottom line is that we need to continue with whatever our justice system will allow us to consider to go forward, and not to be intimidated by people who might be committing some acts, whether it's threats of or actual acts themselves.

KAGAN: If you just look at this one act, or if you look at it as two acts that happened in '98, 224 people losing their lives, two American embassies targeted, 12 Americans dead in those 224. A lot of Americans are going to think, why doesn't the U.S. government just go and get Osama bin Laden? Is it just not that simple? DALY: It's just not that simple. A lot of people always ask me that same question. You know, when we see him, why don't we have him assassinated? Why don't we just grab him?

In fact, a few months ago, he was seen surfacing at a wedding feast over in Afghanistan or alleged to have been there. There were some photos of him. It's more complicated than that because he also now has a much larger network than perhaps he did a few years ago. We know that from arrests, both Mr. Ressam, who came in from Canada; with the arrests of the embassy bombing individuals. We have people in Jordan arrested.

We have concerns about his association with the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and there are other people in other cells around the world that we want to make sure that when they go after him, it's not -- a) we're able to be successful in doing that and bringing him to justice and number two, that we are able to in some way dismantle his command and control mechanisms, that we're able to disperse his organization so we don't have these viable cells around the world that are still going to propagate his beliefs. So, we're going to try to dismantle at the same time we grab him.

KAGAN: Bill, people like you are in the danger business, the business of looking at the risks out there, but what about the average American? What do we need to be doing to protect ourselves or is it just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

DALY: Well, you know, unfortunately, it comes down to that. You know, it's a matter that we do face more of risk of getting up in the morning and crossing the street going to work than we actually do of being the victim of terrorist attack.

It's not to minimize that, because when they do occur, they are certainly tragic and unfortunately, there's many more lives lost at one time than some other incidents. So, they are very dramatic. But for ourselves and our day-to-day life, there's nothing that we can really do to either thwart or not put ourselves in harm's way.

I think the best thing is is to listen to advice. If we do know there's going to be some concern over travel security, we may want to consider making other arrangements concern. If there's concern about being in a particular place, we hope the authorities will let us know.

But we have to be consoled by the fact this investigation to bin Laden, as well as other terrorist groups -- he's right now the poster boy for terrorism, but there are other terrorist groups out there -- is that at any one time, the U.S. government, as well as other international agencies, are investigating and going after these people. We have seen some inroads. As I mentioned, the arrest in Jordan back in the millennium, the arrest of Ressam.

I believe they are making inroads. It will take a while, but unfortunately, terrorism is something that's been around, and unfortunately, will continue to be around.

KAGAN: Well, as we saw with Timothy McVeigh, more than capable, America, of producing its own terrorist as well. Bill Daly, thanks for joining us with the information today. We appreciate it.

DALY: Thank you.

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