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American Morning
Marines To Move From Camp Rhino
Aired December 27, 2001 - 08:10 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: After a month at Camp Rhino, U.S. Marines are preparing to relocate to a new base of operations at the Kandahar Airport.
CNN's Bill Hemmer is there. He joins us with details on all the marines' activities. Bill, hello again.
BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes Miles, hello to you and they've been here about 14 days now -- two weeks solid. I just want to talk a little more about that bin Laden tape quickly, listening to your interview there. Here in Afghanistan, we've been engaging the marines' reaction to it and I can tell you a lot of marines frankly don't know about it. And when asked, many people referred to the initial bin Laden tape that we all watched several weeks ago.
But those who have seen it, they say it's nothing new. They say the words and the orders he's given out before, something they've heard in the past and it certainly will not change their mission here in Afghanistan -- a pretty much of a muted reaction, though, overall to that bin Laden videotape here in Afghanistan.
Let's talk now about the detainees and again what's critical about this latest group, about 20 were brought in late last night about 2:00 in the morning here on board a giant C-130. We are told through sources at the base that this group of detainees was picked up and nabbed along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Now why is that critical?
Well specifically there were major concerns during the battle over Tora Bora that hundreds if not thousands of al Qaeda fighters might try and flee east and south into Pakistan and might possibly escape. Well the Pakistani army mobilized a couple of weeks ago -- it may be in part the reason why they were picked up. We don't know specifically if that is why.
But suffice to say at this point, 20 more bringing the total now to 37 and what will happen from here, they'll be questioned. They'll be processed and certainly they will be gauged in trying to get any information they can from these detainees about al Qaeda or Taliban leadership and their operations at the latest on the detainees here.
Also another matter to talk about, the hospital in Kandahar. We've mentioned this for the past several days. Now day five where eight Arab-al Qaeda fighters are hold up inside loaded with ammunition. They say they will not come out and certainly will not
surrender to any U.S. forces. Well that hospital has been surrounded by Afghan guards and apparently the leader of that guard group is growing rather impatient.
He says his fighters have not slept in three nights. They are impatient as well and in his words, at some time very soon they are ready to -- quote -- "finish them". It's possible, even though it's ongoing that this situation may be resolved at any moment. We'll watch it all for you. More momentarily in Kandahar, but for now back to Atlanta. Here's Miles once again -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Thank you very much. Bill Hemmer in Kandahar. So what can the U.S. learn from the al Qaeda members being moved to the new U.S. military compound?
CNN Military Analyst Major General Don Shepperd has been following the build-up in Kandahar. He joins us now from Tucson, Arizona. General Shepperd, good to have you with us again.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET)., CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning Miles.
O'BRIEN: What's the procedure in a situation like this? First of all, let's talk about security -- with that prison uprising in Mazar-e Sharif, high on everybody's mind right now. I assume the marines are taking all kinds of precautions here. Can you just give us a general sense of the kinds of things that routinely do.
SHEPPERD: Yes. You bet. Basically they treat them just like the prisoners that you see on TV. They handcuff them. They shackle them. They tie them together, but because of Mazar-e Sharif, they are being super, super careful to make sure that they are searched properly and detained properly and it's very much like police work from here on. You get them in prison, then you start the interrogation process Miles.
O'BRIEN: And part of a marine expeditionary unit, there are people trained in this very area?
SHEPPERD: Indeed there are. Basically the way it works is your military police from all services in turn the prisoners, if you will, capture them, put them in prison, and then military intelligence begins to interrogate them. In the interrogation people think an interrogation is torture -- that's not it at all. It's pressure -- you use one prisoner against the other, but the idea is to get them to talk.
And sometimes the friendly approach work; sometimes the good cop- bad cop, but we have professionals that do this that know how to extract information and if you -- then you put together a total picture and then make a judgment on that picture about whether it's worthy of action or not.
O'BRIEN: What about the language skills required for all of this? The marines are not necessarily well schooled in all of that. How do they accomplish that?
SHEPPERD: No. There are probably native language speakers from all services involved in this interrogation as well as FBI and CIA people as well. So we're able to gather enough people with the language skills and also likely are getting help from some of the local Afghan populists in doing this.
O'BRIEN: Now do you suspect there's just a treasure trove of intelligence there, you know just kind of lying in the offing, if they ask the right questions and apply the right pressure.
SHEPPERD: Absolutely I do. I think a lot of these people are from foreign nations that will have an inkling of what's going on in those foreign nations; who's been involved over time; and out of this will grow a picture of where we should go next and where remaining al Qaeda members may flee. So I think it is indeed a treasure trove -- great word.
O'BRIEN: On the other side of it, though, you have the sense that this al Qaeda organization because it is so dispersed and compartmentalized, a lot of people may not know the big picture. Very few people might know the big picture -- perhaps only Osama bin Laden and his closest confidants. Is there still relative information there even when you're talking about foot soldiers?
SHEPPERD: Yes. Absolutely. Again the pieces of information all the way from the bottom to the very top, they -- most of them have not -- probably have not seen bin Laden and not met with him -- have not met with the senior leaders, but they'll each one of them know little pieces and gradually over time, through repeated interrogations and to comparing one story against another -- one lie against another, if you will, you'll be able to put together a fairly sophisticated picture that will lead you in directions of where to go next and where to capture people, which is the important part.
O'BRIEN: Of course in a sense your time if of the essence. You want to get this information as quickly as possible because it might require a very quick real-time decision on perhaps targeting a location. How is this all processed? How does that information get back to Tampa ultimately, to the White House so that a decision can be made.
SHEPPERD: Well there's two aspects of that. First of all the immediate military information -- where are people right now; where are weapons stored; where is an attack likely to come next. That's very time sensitive and that will be fed into computers, fusion engines, if you will, compared and pictures drawn out of that. But again in some -- in the final essence, a person has to make the judgment about what's true and what to go after.
The longer-term picture -- the deeper picture doesn't take much time. In fact we need to take our time and decide where to go next. Lots of people want us to rush to Iraq and rush into military action in Iraq. That's probably not a smart thing to do. So we need to take our time and get the right information and let the host nations of these terrorists, including our own, by the way, go after these terrorists rather than rush into military action around the globe.
O'BRIEN: There has been criticism in the past that the intelligence gathering capability often times doesn't mesh as well as it could with the decision-making capability. Is that improving?
SHEPPERD: I think it's improving. Of course we are very good at beating up people in retrospect when something happens. But when you look at what's been done to put together a sophisticated intelligence picture in Afghanistan to do what has been done -- that's been done very rapidly.
The -- there has been improvement in cooperation between the agencies and especially within the military, which has concentrated on joint operations -- joint, joint, joint has been the mantra for a long time and it appears to be working, but it's always difficult working these stove pipes together.
O'BRIEN: All right, Major General Don Shepperd, our military analyst, as always trying to put the stove pipes together for us. We do appreciate it. We'll check in with you in just a bit.
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