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American Morning

Interview With Dan Benjamin On Taliban Retaliation

Aired November 19, 2001 - 08:25   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: Welcome back. Weeks of bombing obviously have weakened the Taliban, but they are not out yet.

The big question is whether the Taliban can and will retaliate. No one knows for sure, but senior Bush administration officials say we should stay on guard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think we have to anticipate attacks under almost any circumstances. And clearly, this is a campaign not just in Afghanistan, and the most important piece of the campaign, which is not military, is here in the United States.

Hopefully, we've had some success, though we don't for sure. We don't know what we've disrupted by the people we've arrested here over the last two months. But I think we've had some effect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: For some perspective in all of this, we turn to Dan Benjamin. He's a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a former member of the National Security Council staff under President Clinton. He joins from Washington this morning.

Good to see you. Welcome.

DAN BENJAMIN, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Good morning.

ZAHN: So what is your sense of this? Does the Taliban have enough wherewithal to retaliate at this point?

BENJAMIN: Well, the Taliban, in the near term will be able to carry out some kind of guerrilla warfare. But I think that the most important thing is that the Taliban itself is not going to be carrying out operations outside of Afghanistan against Americans.

That leaves the issue of al Qaeda, and that, of course, is a whole other subject entirely.

ZAHN: What is your chief concern about al Qaeda at the moment? BENJAMIN: Well, on September 11th, Americans learned that al Qaeda was prepared to kill enormous amounts of Americans. And I believe that they will try to do that whenever they get the chance.

Now, they've been disrupted in many ways. They've just lost their number three leader in Mohammad Atef, but it's a very large network, and it's quite durable. And I think we have to expect that they will continue to try to attack Americans.

And so, even though we may be seeing a lot of success on the ground in Afghanistan, I don't think anyone should take away from that a sense that the terrorist threat has passed. It really hasn't.

ZAHN: And we've talked so much about what is or what isn't their biological and chemical weapon potential.

But the bottom line is, that we learned on September 11th, they were very effective in using our technology to kill Americans.

Is that what worries you the most?

BENJAMIN: Well, I think we need to be worried about all the different means of attack.

They -- what they showed most of all on the 11th was an extraordinary ingenuity about tactics. They showed that they can turn our own infrastructure against us.

And there are certainly a lot of different ways in which they could do that, whether it's through putting explosives or even unconventional weapons in containers being shipped into the U.S., or actually using a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon against us here at home.

My own feeling is that the, that they have the desire to use a nuclear weapon, but they almost certainly do not have it, or I should say, probably don't have one, because they're still rather difficult to acquire.

They have been seeking chemical weapons for many years, now, and they probably have some kind of chemical weapon capability.

And as for biological, that's a rather recent interest of theirs. How far they have gotten with it is hard to say.

ZAHN: I was listening to one of your colleagues over the weekend on a talk show, talk about how his chief concern is that the hazardous materials that travel through this country are not very secure, and the possibility exists that you could, you know, let an explosive charge out in a tunnel and do a great deal of damage.

How well aware of these threats is the government, and what kind of precautions are they taking at this point?

BENJAMIN: Well, of course, the hazardous material issue was one that came up immediately after September 11th, and as you may recall, there were warnings about precisely that kind of attack.

I think the government is aware of it. It's a very difficult problem to deal with.

This is, again, another case in which it's our infrastructure, and dismantling it almost brings our economy to a halt, or certainly parts of the economy.

We have a lot to do in the next few years in terms of becoming a harder target, of changing from a security system that is based on a threat, that is based on warning, which we were able to base our security on in the past, to one that is based on assessing our vulnerabilities well ahead of time.

And hazardous materials are certainly one of those areas that we need to look at closely and figure out what we can do so that terrorists cannot turn it against us.

ZAHN: Dan Benjamin, good of you to join us this morning. Thank you for your insights. Appreciate them, as tough as they are for all of us to continue to deal with. Again, we appreciate your time.

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