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American Morning

Remains in Tora Bora May Be bin Laden's Guards

Aired May 07, 2002 - 07:01   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: "Up Front" this morning, the war in Afghanistan. Canadian forces have just returned today from a three- day mission in the Tora Bora region. The soldiers were there extracting DNA samples from what are believed to be the buried remains of several of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, killed during last December's bombing campaign.

CNN's Ryan Chilcote is in Bagram, where the soldiers have just returned -- good morning, Ryan. What led the soldiers to believe that the bodies of any al Qaeda leaders, possibly Osama bin Laden himself, were buried in this area?

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's a good question, Paula -- good morning. Yes, we have to go back to December. You will remember that there was a very intensive bombing campaign in the Tora Bora area. And the thought is that the U.S. intelligence also believes that during that campaign, they actually heard Osama bin Laden talking to his troops on a walkie talkie. Now, some members of the intelligence community believe that that was the last time they heard from Osama bin Laden.

So the thought is that perhaps they killed Osama bin Laden in that bombing, and that if they did, that perhaps his remains are still there. So that's why these troops went into this area, to look for the remains.

Now, you will see some video right now of what, at least at some point in time, may have been a cave. The U.S. bombed this cave -- they are calling it cave No. 4 -- back in December. And just before they bombed it, they saw between 40 and 70 al Qaeda, what they say were al Qaeda fighters, run into it. Now, they believe that it's possible that Osama bin Laden could have been with them, because there were so many fighters.

So they were trying to blast their way back into that cave to look for remains inside. But as you can see, they were unsuccessful, and they weren't able to get into that cave -- back to you, Paula.

ZAHN: What else did they find though, Ryan, in the search outside of there?

CHILCOTE: Well, interestingly enough, while they were there, some villagers came up to the troops, and said, Well, you know, you're not going to get into of those caves. But what we can tell you is that just after the fighting in December, we buried 25 Arab fighters in our town's graveyard. So that obviously perked up the attention and got the attention of the criminal investigators that were on this trip that included the FBI.

They went to that graveyard, and with the village elders' permission, apparently, started digging up those graves and extracting samples, DNA samples, usually hair samples, from those corpses, and then put them back in.

Now, obviously they were looking for the corpse of Osama bin Laden. Initial reports are they didn't find it. As you know, Osama bin Laden is a very tall man. And when they were looking at these bodies, they were looking for a very tall individual, which I understand they did not find. But we'll just have to see who they did find. They believe that there might be some senior al Qaeda guys in there, but we won't know until they get those DNA samples back from the lab -- back to you, Paula.

ZAHN: All right. Ryan Chilcote, thanks for that exclusive this morning.

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