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American Morning

America Strikes Back: Diego Garcia: Small Island in Indian Ocean Plays Critical Role in War on Terrorism

Aired October 09, 2001 - 09:20   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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: I want to get back to the military angle on this right now. You may have heard us talking about Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean playing a rather important and critical part in the conflict. B-52s, part of Operation Enduring Freedom, are based on that island.

Miles O'Brien joins us now with more on this strategic little place out there on the Indian Ocean.

Miles, hello.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, let me ask you a quick question: I know you are a world traveler; have you ever been to Diego Garcia?

HEMMER: No, I haven't. I'm aware of it, but I've never been -- yet, I should say.

O'BRIEN: The short response to that is you are not missing too much. Diego Garcia is strategically important, but once you get there, there is not much else besides a U.S. naval facility.

Let's take a look at Diego Garcia, get you oriented to region and give you a sense of why this is such a key player in all of this. Diego Garcia is about 400 miles south of the equator, and it is a 10.5 square mile atoll, part of an archipelago which is part of the British Indian Ocean territory. Just to give you a sense of scale, that's about 800 miles right there. This to the Afghanistan border is about 2,000 miles, and this is about 1,800 miles to Oman.

This became a base of operations even though it's owned by Brits -- a U.S. base of operations -- in mid '70s. It was considered strategically important in the Cold War because it is smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, south of an area of cyclonic activity, so the weather by and large would be good for staging operations, keeping an eye on the Soviet Union.

Just to give you a sense of what we have been seeing and hearing about, B-52 and B-1 runs from Diego Garcia go about 2,400 miles to Kabul. That is well within the range of both of aircraft; the B-52 has about an 8,000 mile range, so round trip, it could do it without worrying about refueling at all. Let's take a look at some images we found on the Web, to give you a sense of what this place looks like. It's called the Footprint of Freedom. You can get the sense of why they call it a footprint. It has that shape of a shoe, if you will. To give you a sense of this, it is about 35 miles across this way, and about 15 miles across that way. If you look right here, there's the long runway there. I suppose you could you think of this as kind of a stationary aircraft carrier, in a sense.

Look at this image. This is a shot from the space shuttle, taken back in 1984. There you once again get that sense of that footprint effect.

It was discovered in 1500s by the Portuguese, and it ultimately went into the hands of the French, then the British, which got it after the Napoleonic Wars -- that's C-141 on the strip there, in the mid '70s. It is a very lushly vegetative place. Prior to the military base getting there, it's primary production was coconut oil. That is no longer the issue. There were five plantations.

The mean temperature there is about 83 degrees. It gets about 104 inches of rain each year, so if you're planning a vacation, I wouldn't recommend Diego Garcia. If you're a Pentagon planner now, Diego Garcia is about the best place in the world from which to stage these long-range missions into the area around Afghanistan.

We'll send it back to Bill.

HEMMER: Thank you, Miles.

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