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American Morning

U.S. Could Send Special Forces to New Countries

Aired August 12, 2002 - 09:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Some more information which is available now on the story -- report we talked about earlier this month, a U.S. strategy that would send special operations troops into several countries to get terrorist leaders.
Our Barbara Starr is up early at the Pentagon this morning -- Barbara, good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn. Well, as CNN did report back early in August, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is now looking at a number of plans to make greater use of Special Forces around the world to either capture or even kill the top al Qaeda leadership.

All of this, in fact, could now lead to the use of Special Forces in countries where they have not operated before, even in countries where the leaders may not be informed that Special Forces, U.S. troops, are there.

Now that would be quite extraordinary, of course. But part of what's going on here is potentially the use of Special Forces in what Don Rumsfeld called "ungoverned territories," countries like Somalia or the tribal regions of Pakistan where the central government has very little control that may be becoming al Qaeda hideouts.

All of this is because Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the top military leadership believe it is time to refocus their energies on the top al Qaeda leadership, perhaps less than a dozen men who surround Osama bin Laden who are deemed capable of organizing and ordering further major terrorist attacks. They want to get to those people. They believe if they can use Special Forces and do that, they may actually be able to deal quite a death blow to the al Qaeda.

There's no doubt about it. If all of this comes to pass, it will be a major expansion of the use of Special Forces around the world. Of course, they have been involved in the war on terrorism, in supporting the war on terrorism, this will put them in charge of some key covert, clandestine missions -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Barbara, thank you very much.

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