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American Morning
Closer Look Now at Efforts to Smoke Out Osama Bin Laden
Aired November 19, 2001 - 07:18 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to take a closer look now at efforts to smoke out Osama bin Laden. Bill Hemmer is on top of that now. He joins us from Atlanta -- good morning again, Bill.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Paula, good morning.
The world's largest manhunt under way now. His location remains a topic of intense speculation. Reports over the weekend suggesting Osama bin Laden had left Afghanistan. However, those reports later retracted.
The U.S. thinks bin Laden is still there and so the manhunt continues inside Afghanistan. Reports from London suggest bin Laden's location had been narrowed to a 30 square mile area. But if bin Laden should try to escape that dragnet, where would he go?
Retired Air Force General and CNN military analyst Don Shepperd, perspective for us on a Monday morning -- General, good morning to you. Let's start another week, shall we?
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Bill.
HEMMER: Good morning to you.
First, to the map, General, if we could, and let's talk about the area under discussion right now, chiefly in southern Afghanistan. There are a couple options overland here. Bin Laden could go south through that desert area into Pakistan. He could go east over a more mountainous area, possibly west to Iran. All this certainly is speculation. General, what is likely here?
SHEPPERD: Well, it's likely that he's still in Afghanistan and he's still held up. The most likely of all those routes that you just draw would be into Pakistan, where there's a lot of Pashtuns in that particular area and he does have a lot of sympathy.
The problem for him is that he's got a lot of people looking for him. On the other side, he's got a lot of money and he's undoubtedly thought about many, many escape plans and has alternatives and he's willing to pay people to help him get out.
But the noose is really tightening and we are really looking for him in a smaller and smaller area all the time. The Kandahar area is probably a fairly good guess right now, Bill.
HEMMER: You heard what Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday. He said there's a possibility he could have caught a helicopter ride out. Again, it is a possibility.
SHEPPERD: Yes, it is, indeed. He could have a helicopter shepherded away in a cave somewhere that he would plan for an escape. But no matter where he goes, he's going to have a big entourage. He stands out and he's got to have someplace to finally rest. And the United States and this coalition has made it clear that wherever he goes, whoever harbors him will suffer the same fate as he does. That's a big loud warning for anyone that's thinking about it.
HEMMER: What do you make of what the administration officials were saying over the weekend, indicating that they believe he's still in there, based on intelligence or at this point is it more than that?
SHEPPERD: No, I suspect it's based on intelligence. We are listening, we are watching, we are focusing our sensors on a smaller and smaller area. And as you've been able to see on the TV, the weather has been very good. That really helps us.
At the same time, we've got more special forces in the area. They're doing roadblocks. If we knew where he was, you would see all of our air power and all of our special forces concentrated on that one area. It's still clear we don't have him earmarked right now to one specific location.
HEMMER: Back on the map, General, quickly here, there's another area that we have talked about quite a bit, that's the cave area, believed to be roughly in this area right here. Do we know, General, how many caves are possible?
SHEPPERD: Now, clearly there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of caves, throughout Afghanistan. Now, that area you've circled, if you think of that as the Rocky Mountains between, say, Denver and Aspen, you can imagine all of the places available to one man or a small contingent of people to hide. It's a really difficult problem to dig him out of all of those caves and we're not going to try to do that.
We're going to try to get intelligence from captured soldiers. We're going to try to buy intelligence. We're going to try to take defectors and we're going to narrow it down so that we can focus our efforts. But it's still a big problem.
HEMMER: It is a huge manhunt, as you mentioned.
General Shepperd, thanks. We'll talk again next hour. Good deal. Back to Paula now, quickly, in New York -- Paula, see you again in a couple of minutes.
ZAHN: All right, thanks, Bill.
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