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American Morning

Interview of George Friedman and Brian Jenkins

Aired November 20, 2001 - 08:12   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: Back now to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. There are reports he is hiding in a 30-square mile area in southern Afghanistan. But even catching bin Laden may not disrupt al Qaeda's overall terrorist operations.

With us is intelligence and international terrorism analyst George Friedman, Chairman of the intelligence consulting firm Stratfor, who joins us from Austin, Texas this morning. Glad the rain has stopped there, nice to see the sun come out there in Texas.

Also here to talk with us is Brian Jenkins who knows just about -- more about terrorism about than anybody else we've talked to in the past. Welcome to you as well. He, of course, is with the Rand Corporation.

George, I wanted to start with you this morning. Let's talk a little bit about that 30-mile area that British intelligence officials first reported that they believed Osama bin Laden seems to be trapped in. Describe to us what the special forces will do on the ground now as they try to get the Northern Alliance troops to, as it were, smoke them out.

GEORGE FRIEDMAN, CHAIRMAN OF STRATFOR: Well they're trying not to walk around kind of randomly poking into things. They're using human intelligence, rumors hence allegations that Osama's been spotted here or there to at least focus their search.

They're obviously also using electronic intelligence to catch up any cell phones, radio signals, or anything else that he might be emitting. But the probability is he's not doing a lot of that in order to remain safe. So to a great extent you're relying on pretty unreliable intelligence from human sources and you're hoping to get lucky.

ZAHN: Do you think they'll get lucky?

FREIDMAN: We hope we gets lucky. It's a very big country. It's in complete chaos. Human sources there are notoriously unreliable and we don't even know if he's in that 30-mile square area. We're, I think, hoping and guessing.

ZAHN: Over the past weekend, George, authorities arrested some eight suspected al Qaeda members in Spain. How critical are those arrests? FREIDMAN: I think in some ways it's more critical than catching bin Laden himself. Right now I suspect he's not operational. He's not in contact with his assets overseas. The control centers have shifted for awhile, I think, to Europe and north Africa. Breaking those up is absolutely critical and we're still getting some signs out of Germany, out of Egypt, out of Spain -- other places that we're making some headway in breaking up those control centers.

And that's really the key because remember the goal of this war is not catching bin Laden, it's rendering al Qaeda incapable of carrying out further terror attacks in the United States.

ZAHN: And these terrorist cells have long been a concern of Brian Jenkins. Brian, I wanted to repeat for the folks that are watching this today, part of your testimony before the Senate Arms Services Committee when you spoke to this issue and you said -- quote -- "the terrorist leaders did not intend September 11th to be their latest act. They intended it as the beginning of their end game.

Therefore, they would have made plans to survive the anticipated military response and continue to communicate and they have set in motion terrorist operations that will occur weeks or months or years from now". You're in the business of risk assessment business. How big of a risk are these sleeper cells Brian?

BRIAN JENKINS, RAND CORPORATION: Oh I think there's a considerable risk. I think it was predictable to the leadership of al Qaeda that the attack on September 11th would provoke a response by the United States. In fact I think that was its intended result and therefore, there would have been in place two plans on September 10th.

One for the attack on September the 11th and the other for the survival of the networks so that the leadership could possibly survive so that it could continue to communicate to its followers and to its constituents and we've seen a number of videotapes come out from the headquarters and so that it could continue operations and therefore, I suspect that it's a number of operations were put in motion -- cells in place to carry out -- to carry out terrorist attacks without further direction from the top, depending on local circumstances.

ZAHN: Now even with Osama bin Laden gone, you say that these sleeper cells could continue to operate pretty effectively.

JENKINS: Yes -- yes, they could. One thing that we have seen in the -- in the structure of this group -- first of all this is in addition to being an organization at the center that supports these various terrorist operations worldwide, it also has a degree of autonomy where there are local cells that collect intelligence, that propose operations and then these are put up to the central leadership for approval. But they don't necessarily need that approval to go ahead. In fact, that could be arranged in advance that when they have an operation; when they have a target; even without instruction, they will -- they will proceed.

Again, keep in mind we're talking about a network here. A network in which certainly bin Laden has played a principal role as an organizer in terms of arranging the finance, but a network that probably doesn't depend entirely on any single individual.

ZAHN: So George, in closing this morning, walk us through the challenge the U.S. government has and the other nations have who have joined in this war against terrorism effort when you know that as Brian just explained there, these local cells that sometimes answer to a more central leadership, but aren't necessarily connected to bin Laden himself. How do you stamp them out?

FREIDMAN: It's a tremendous challenge and extremely difficult. Al Qaeda was designed to learn from the lessons of the 1970s when terrorist groups were broken apart by the Israelis and others and it's built on redundancy, autonomy, and a great deal of the trust in the people in the field.

What you have to do is to break into the chain of command somewhere so you get sufficient intelligence about who is in the United States; where they might be; and to start rolling them up. And that's one of the reasons why the focus that we have on bin Laden right now, although quite understandable, really doesn't capture the essence of the problem, which is that bin Laden has probably been out of touch with these people for weeks or months. Their control, to the extent that it exists, has devolved to other areas, probably in Europe and to some extent, North Africa, and that the intelligence of what's happened in the United States to the extent that there is intelligence is probably located there.

So the shadowy war that we get little hints of when there's occasional arraignments in Madrid or Hamburg or something else is probably at this point more important than anything that is happening in Afghanistan except for whatever intelligence we're picking up in the safehouses and so on. This war is going to be decided in a dozen countries in very quiet ways, if we're lucky.

ZAHN: And I hope we are lucky. George Friedman, Brian Jenkins, thank you very much for helping us better understand this enormous challenge that lies ahead, appreciate your time, have a good holiday weekend you guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

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