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The Big Question: Why Has CIA Come Out of Shadows From Fighting War on Terror to Finding Peace in Mideast?

Aired May 09, 2002 - 07:33   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: Why has the CIA come out of the shadows from fighting the war on terror to finding peace in the Middle East? The CIA is playing a prominent and more public role in the president's foreign policy. And in a moment, we're going to talk with the former head of the CIA about that. But, first, here's National Security Correspondent David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president wants his CIA Director, George Tenet, to help forge a single Palestinian security service that can find terrorism out of the ruins of several Palestinian services badly damaged by the Israelis during their West Bank incursions.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: George Tenet will be going back to the region to help construct the -- design the construction of a security force -- a unified security force that will be transparent and held accountable.

ENSOR: Why Tenet, why the CIA? Palestinian security officials say they trust the CIA, which has helped them over the years, more than they trust American diplomats or political figures. The Tenet mission is part of an increasingly visible role overseas for an agency that generally prefers working in the shadows.

In Afghanistan, CIA paramilitary officers were among the first on the ground last October at the beginning of the American war on terrorism. The first American casualty in that war, Michael Spann, was a CIA officer. It is the CIA that is running the unmanned predator drones, armed for the first time in this war with hellfire missiles, searching for al Qaeda holdouts in Afghanistan. When they find them, they open fire.

(on camera): CIA officials are not particularly happy with their increasingly public role, but they say that it may be inevitable in the post Cold War world, where the agency's key challenge is now preventing terrorism of any kind against Americans.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ZAHN: And for more now on what appears to be a new role for the agency, we are joined by former CIA Director, James Woolsey, who is in Washington this morning -- good to have you back, sir.

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: So Mr. Woolsey, you just heard David Ensor say the chief mission of the CIA today is to protect Americans from terrorism. Do you believe that the agency has an expanded role, or do you think that its role has just become more visible?

WOOLSEY: I think it's definitely an expanded role. I think it's played an important and positive role in the war in Afghanistan. We've been focusing on counter-terrorism for a long time in the CIA for well more than decades since before I got there in 1993. But I think that in fact we're now in the middle of a huge war against several movements in the Mideast, really, and I think it will last a long time. I think the CIA will be central to that.

ZAHN: Why was the CIA so blind-sided by what happened on September 11th?

WOOLSEY: Well part of what happened was that much of the planning that took place for this took place in two places: Germany and the United States, where the CIA doesn't spy. In a way, we might have had a better chance of finding out what they were doing if they had been plotting this in Beirut. Also, it was a failure really of American security, generally. The FAA, airport security, it wasn't just intelligence.

But there were some things that we weren't doing right. We didn't have enough Arabic speakers in the CIA. We had some guidelines from late '95 we were operating under that made it hard to recruit spies if those spies had some violence in their background. And that would be sort of liking asking the FBI to penetrate the Mafia, but please don't put any actual crooks on your payroll as informants.

So they finally changed those guidelines. There were some things that they were doing wrong, I think. But on the whole, they were focusing very hard on the issue. It was just that the al Qaeda plan was very clever and much of it was hatched in places where the CIA doesn't spy.

ZAHN: And what would you say specifically are some of the things the CIA will be engaged in today perhaps the agency wouldn't have done as recently as two, three years ago?

WOOLSEY: Well it was a couple or three years ago that President Clinton first brought the CIA in this business for working with the Palestinians and Israelis simultaneously. A kind of out of the shadows and into the light of day. The CIA, the CIA directors and more junior officers have played this kind of mediating, brokering role behind the scenes in all sorts of ways for many years. What was different was that it was acknowledged and it was the director himself. I think that one of the things that's been going on really is that in an odd kind of way, the CIA has more of a reputation for objectivity, particularly with the Israelis than the American State Department. The State Department (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bureau, and not entirely without reason. It has been viewed by the Israelis over the years as tilting somewhat in the Arab direction on various matters related to the Mideast.

And I think the CIA is perhaps the only institution in the U.S. government -- and the U.S. government was the only government in the world that was acceptable both to the Israelis and the Palestinians in playing this sort of mediation role. It's really sort of interesting and odd, but that's what happens.

ZAHN: Mr. Woolsey, we just have about 20 seconds left. Of course, the CIA has not been immune to criticism. Yesterday, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the CIA of not cooperating with the Congress' investigation of the 9-11 disaster.

WOOLSEY: Well Senator Graham is a very serious man, and if he said that, they had better look to themselves and make sure that they provide him with what he needs. He, and Porter Goss, the House Chairman, are I think going to do a fair and excellent job in these hearings, and they need the full cooperation of the agency.

ZAHN: All right. James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, thank you so much for your time this morning.

WOOLSEY: Thank you.

ZAHN: Glad to have you back on AM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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