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American Morning

Interview of Robert Baer, "See No Evil"

Aired February 07, 2002 - 09:14   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: The big question this hour: Is the CIA leading the war on terror? As we have been reporting, the Pentagon says a CIA missile attack earlier this week may have killed a prominent al Qaeda leader. Officials say there is even a 10 to 15 percent chance it was Osama bin Laden.

Well, the CIA has played a key role in the war on terror, unlike in any other major conflict, and CIA George Tenet testified on Capitol Hill yesterday defending his agency's role, and answering questions about what the CIA did and did not know before 9/11. Tenet said that while hundreds of al Qaeda operatives in dozens of countries are now in custody, the terrorist threat to American soil remains very strong.

Robert Baer is a former CIA officer and the author of the book "See No Evil." He joins us now from Washington -- welcome, good to see you.

ROBERT BAER, "SEE NO EVIL": Good morning.

ZAHN: What leapt out at you yesterday when you thought about what George Tenet had to say publicly?

BAER: George Tenet has a difficult mission in front of him. He can't blame the CIA, but the CIA does share some of the blame for September 11th, as does the FBI, State, Immigrations -- everybody does, and I think what he was telling us he is going to get on -- it's a new mission, new mandate, and he is going to put people back on the ground, and he's doing exactly the right thing.

ZAHN: So, in your estimation, what was the CIA's biggest shortcoming pre-September 11th, and what can you do to change that?

BAER: I think the biggest shortcoming was that the information that the CIA gets from technical means should have been complemented by more human sources on the ground, more people on the Afghan border, maybe even Afghanistan, before September 11th, but that was not the CIA's political mandate, and that has got to change now.

ZAHN: Do you see any evidence that it is changing?

BAER: Oh, absolutely, and it's also -- I should add, that it is going to be very dangerous for the CIA to be involved in a ground war in a place like Afghanistan. Innocents will be killed, and we just have to remember this when the blame is thrown around after the war, that it wasn't the CIA's fault, it was a political decision.

ZAHN: Well, this has already happened, with the killing of a number of Afghan civilians, right? And Hamid Karzai came out and said, you know, that it was unfortunate, but apparently our officers had been given some very bad information.

BAER: That's going to happen in war like this. Afghanistan is a snake pit. Probably much worse than Vietnam ever was. We are just going to have to accept that innocents will die, and we will do our best to correct it, with good intelligence.

ZAHN: So realistically, what kind of a role will be CIA play when we know that you can buy off warlords with very simple bribes, and alliances change very rapidly in that country?

BAER: The CIA has to sit down, very methodically, and sort through human sources until finds people that will tell it the truth, and this could take years, unfortunately to vet (ph), train, and make sure these sources are telling us the truth, could take years. That's what the CIA's role should be. Primary, at least.

ZAHN: But in the meantime, the head of the CIA has made it abundantly clear to Americans that al Qaeda can very quickly reconstitute itself and do some very serious damage to us once again. Let's replay that part of his testimony from yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE TENET, CIA DIRECTOR: We know that the terrorists have considered attacks in the U.S. against high-profile government or private facilities, famous landmarks, and U.S. infrastructure nodes such as airports, bridges, harbors, and dams. High profile events such as Olympics or last weekend's Super Bowl also fit the terrorists' interest in striking another blow within the United States that would command worldwide media attention.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: Given the fact that Mr. Tenet confirmed that we have seen over 1,000 arrests of al Qaeda operatives all over the world, he still obviously believes they're capable of pulling off another attack, but haven't they been compromised at all?

BAER: Somewhat, but they are compartmented, there are cells that operate independently. That's the problem. And getting into every one of the cells is nearly impossible, as Mr. Tenet said, but that doesn't mean we have to stop trying. We just have to be more aggressive, we have to take more risks, and I think we'll cut them back much more than we have so far.

ZAHN: And you talk about the reality of this "snake pit" that you said the CIA faces in Afghanistan with quickly changing alliances. A lot has been made of the fact that, in the beginning, the CIA didn't have officers on the ground that could speak the same dialect as many of the allies were trying to get into our corner. BAER: I served on the Afghan border in 1992-1994 in Tajikistan, and the fact was that Washington, not the CIA, had written off Afghanistan as a hopeless case, and we were not encouraged to focus on Afghanistan. It was a mistake, but it was a political mistake. not the CIA's.

ZAHN: All right. Robert Baer, we're going to leave it there today.

BAER: Thank you.

ZAHN: A former CIA officer, and the author of the book "See No Evil." Appreciate your time this morning.

BAER: Thanks.

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