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American Morning

Security Specialists: New York Nuclear Threat

Aired March 05, 2002 - 08:09   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 at this hour: Should New York have been warned about a potential nuclear threat? Yesterday, we told you about "Time" magazine's cover story, a report of a threat that terrorists had actually planned to detonate a nuclear device in a harbor of New York City, a threat that the government later said was not credible. But this morning, there is a lot of fallout from the decision to leave members of local law enforcement and city leaders in the dark about the potential catastrophe.

After hearing about the report, former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, said he wasn't the only person who should have been notified.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, FMR. NEW YORK MAYOR: If it's true, then I should have been notified, the New York Police Department should have been notified and the governor should have been notified and the state police should have been notified, at a minimum, and maybe others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Joining us now are two security experts to react to all of that. John Timoney, CEO of Bo Dietl Associates and former police commissioner of Philadelphia -- welcome back.

JOHN TIMONEY, CEO, BO DIETL, ASSOCIATES: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: And William Daly, a former FBI agent now with...

WILLIAM DALY, FORMER FBI AGENT: The Paul Ridge (ph) Group.

ZAHN: OK. Good to see you again.

DALY: Good to see you, Paula.

ZAHN: All right. We just heard what Rudy Giuliani had to say yesterday. I mean, he is not the only one outraged by the decision.

Let me share with you what Bernard Kerik, the former police commissioner of New York City, had to say: "If they had information like that, that's appalling. I was never told. I was concerned we were not being fed all the information." Why would the government had not alerted at least the city officials, so they could make a decision about whether to warn the population or not? John?

TIMONEY: Well, two reasons. One, there is a traditional reluctance on the part of the federal authorities to share information with local authorities. That has gotten better by the way over the last couple of months under the new FBI director. There is also, I think, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are not looking to unnecessarily alarm the general population. However, you still need...

ZAHN: OK, but I get -- I get that John.

TIMONEY: ... to notify the authorities.

ZAHN: So put yourself...

TIMONEY: Yes.

ZAHN: ... back in your commissioner days in Philadelphia.

TIMONEY: Yes.

ZAHN: You find out...

TIMONEY: Yes.

ZAHN: ... three months out -- now, we know this threat wasn't credible.

TIMONEY: Yes.

ZAHN: But let's say it were.

TIMONEY: Right.

ZAHN: It would have been your choice whether to notify your population or not. But you would have had...

TIMONEY: Correct.

ZAHN: ... wanted to have some kind of plan, wouldn't you have?

TIMONEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And as a matter of fact, I testified to Congress regarding that. That you need -- you know, don't be so paternalistic. Give me the information. I'm a big boy. I can make the decision whether or not, you know, to heighten the state of alert, whether or not to gear up the government apparatus to deal with, god forbid, an untoward incident.

ZAHN: What would have been the first thing that New York City officials could have done had they been alerted to this potential threat?

DALY: Well, first off, Paula, I mean, we have to realize that there are close to 40,000 New York City police officers and other workers who could help in some type of search. But you also have to be thinking of the larger city. This is not just Manhattan we are talking about -- boroughs which have millions of people. So it's possible that they would have been able to do something to at least minimize the exposure or the danger to those people.

ZAHN: Could you have done that without letting the public know what you were up to?

DALY: No. You would have had to let -- if you're taking that course, you would have had to let the public know. But you know, there are some things though that you could have done and held it tight. I mean, whether it's through a police commissioner or whether it's through the mayor's office, that would have at least given them a chance to start thinking in the direction as to what to do and what are some of the next steps.

ZAHN: All right. But we all know how much police departments leak.

DALY (?): Sure.

ZAHN: Would that have been a concern of yours?

TIMONEY: And I'm sure that was a concern of the feds that they leak too much. But however, I think you can gain the confidence of the mayor or the police commissioner that you can begin to gear up the apparatus to respond. And if (UNINTELLIGIBLE) there are some leaks, you can kind of deal with it and handle it your own way. But when it happens from afar from Washington, it's a lot more difficult to deal with the leaks, particularly if you don't know what's going on. And so I think you have got to trust the local mayor, the local police commissioner. Now, they can handle their city. That's why they are in charge.

ZAHN: All right. So are you telling me that's exactly what the government didn't do? That the government couldn't trust you guys on the ground?

TIMONEY: You have got to ask the government that. My sense is historically, traditionally, that has been the operating philosophy of the many in the federal law enforcement.

ZAHN: The concern, of course, was that had you gone public with this plan and alerted the public, there would have been mass panic. Can you imagine even if the city, the police department had been extremely efficient with the help of the FBI that you could have even put a small plan in place without millions of people trying to leave the city and clog bridges and clog the subways and make a mess of this place?

DALY: If it's believed that this was a credible incident about to take place, it certainly would have been pandemonium. But we have mentioned the FBI, is that in this article, it suggested the FBI wasn't even clued into it. So I mean, we are talking about something that was held by very -- several senior officials down in Washington. We are talking about maybe a nuclear emergency search team was activated or on call to be activated. But it didn't go much further.

But these are things, Paula, that unfortunately we don't have a clear, you know, road map. I mean, this is very difficult situations. They are difficult calls one way or the other. You kind of lose on both sides, whether you alert people and you cause pandemonium, or whether you don't do something. And it's a very difficult call.

ZAHN: But even you would acknowledge now with this Homeland Security department that we have that someone has got to create some kind of road map, don't they? I mean, the fear is, as someone was quoted as saying, that "America's luck will probably run out, and we'll suffer another terrorism attack." The official also added , "There's not a damn thing we're going to be able to do about that." That was an unnamed government source.

Closing thought on that.

DALY: Well, I think that, you know, the issue is larger than just a plan such as this. You are right. They need to have a plan. We need to be thinking more outside of the box. These were not threats that we had to deal with back during the Cold War. This is a different time. It's a different world. We do have to be thinking of those things, but it is much larger. It goes into intelligence gathering. It goes into efforts ongoing outside of the United States to make sure we don't even have this threat to begin with.

ZAHN: Closing thought about what this says about the effectiveness of Homeland Security, a place that many of us predicted you were going to end up working alongside Mr. Ridge.

TIMONEY: Well...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: That didn't happen.

TIMONEY: It actually has gotten better. You've got to remember, that was back in last October. Things have gotten a lot better coming from Ridge's office, particularly the FBI under Bob Mueller. They have been a lot more open, reaching out to local police departments, and so the climate has improved.

What Ray Kelly (ph) did in New York City bringing two feds in to work with the New York City Police Department, a former CIA and a Marine general, to deal with terrorism, I think was master stroke on his part. Again, we've got to close this communication gap, both the formal communication and the informal communication.

ZAHN: And I think once again editorially, we need to make it clear that this threat was later found out to be not credible.

DALY: Not credible, right.

ZAHN: But there was a period of time, where the government was actively looking at this as a possibility.

DALY: Absolutely.

TIMONEY: Yes.

ZAHN: We are going to have to leave it there this morning. Bill, great to see you.

DALY: Paula, good to see you.

ZAHN: John, as well.

TIMONEY: Paula, good to see you.

ZAHN: Good luck to both of you.

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