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American Morning

Instructional Terror Tapes Similar to Terror Manuals

Aired August 21, 2002 - 08:06   ET

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

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And now more on the terror on tape, our investigative reports on the library of al Qaeda tapes that our Nic Robertson brought out of Afghanistan. So far we have seen the deadly result of al Qaeda's training -- bombings in Africa and Yemen, to the suicide hijackings here in the U.S. Today we bring you that training, training at several levels, as al Qaeda's best and al Qaeda's newcomers from lessons in surface to air missiles to precise rehearsals of urban attacks.
Nic Robertson joins us again from CNN Center -- good morning again, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what we learned from these tapes. So you see these raw recruits going through training and then on another tape you expose us to more experienced soldiers or trainees looking as though they're in a rehearsal for something. What were these tapes used for?

ROBERTSON: Well, the tapes appear to be used perhaps to send out -- and this is what our experts say -- perhaps for al Qaeda to be able to send out to their operatives around the world, too, so that those operatives could learn procedures from these.

Now, these tapes also go hand in hand with manuals that CNN discovered in an al Qaeda safe house in Kabul late last year. In those manuals, you can see pictures of where the vehicles are, where the motor bikes should be, descriptions of how the operatives should work.

What we have seen on these tapes is how they rehearsed again and again and again to get these procedures right.

ZAHN: You spoke of these training of recruits. Where do these guys come from?

ROBERTSON: That's not clear exactly where they all come from. But it's widely believed, listening to the accents on the tape, that they come from a whole host of different countries in the Arabic, Arab region of the world. But also on these tapes, we do hear some people speaking English. Now, that's one thing that experts say to us is very important for al Qaeda at this time, to be able to have people, operatives who can blend in in the West, who can go live in Europe, live in the United States, assume different identities and wait for orders to follow up whatever operations it is they've rehearsed and trained in. ZAHN: So, Nic, are these intelligence officials confirming, in fact, that Westerners -- we've heard a couple of them -- that Westerners are joining al Qaeda in some numbers to really worry about here?

ROBERTSON: They don't really know about numbers at this time. But when they looked at these tapes, there were some people who were going through training on those tapes who didn't look as if they came from Afghanistan, who didn't look as if they came from the Gulf region around Saudi Arabia, around Yemen. They looked very much as if they were Europeans or Americans.

So there is cause for concern. The level of concern, though, these, the experts we've talked to, at least, they don't have numbers of how many, let's say, Westerners might be members of al Qaeda.

ZAHN: So, Nic, the exercises we've seen so far here on AMERICAN MORNING would seem to indicate these are urban settings that are supposed to be portrayed. Where are they supposed to be?

ROBERTSON: It's not clear exactly where, but the fact, our experts say, that they would construct a bridge, that they would construct these houses of stone and a canvas and the fact that they used those white stones to lay out a road indicates that they are training, rehearsing, even, for maybe a specific operation or a type of operation in that urban environment.

Laying out a road this way, putting a bridge there, blowing that bridge up, the experts say this is not for training for some kind of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan where they're trying to sort of do hit and run tactics with coalition forces. This is very specifically to take their war to the West, not to wait for the West to come to them in the shape of coalition forces, but very much to prosecute the war the way that they want to do it. They have avowed to take it to the Western world and that's what, that's how our experts interpret what we see here.

ZAHN: In these videotapes we also sees surface to air missiles being used. Now, while they appear to be pretty sophisticated in understanding how to use these weapons, how, what is the state of their technology?

ROBERTSON: Again, that's something that intrigued and worried our experts. When they looked at this surface to air missile and the level of training and the sophistication of the training, again, we showed some very short clips of this training on this missile here. But on the original tape that we have, this tape runs for well over half an hour. The training is very detailed. It's very sophisticated.

What our experts say is while military aircraft can be relatively safe from surface to air missiles -- military aircraft have defensive systems, they can spot when these perhaps heat seeking missiles are fired -- civil aviation is far more at risk, and that's what worries the experts, the fact that al Qaeda could have this level of sophistication, could have not only the weapons systems, but the training and knowledge how to use them. And also who they've disseminated that knowledge to. Are there other al Qaeda associated jihadi groups around the world who have also received this videotape?

That's what concerns the experts. The level of knowledge that's demonstrated on the tapes is the thing that concerns them.

ZAHN: And I guess administration official after administration official talks about how useful this is in understanding just what the threat al Qaeda continues to represent.

ROBERTSON: Indeed.

ZAHN: Nic Robertson, thanks so much.

In the next hour, we will have Nic's full report on the training tapes. And tomorrow, more exclusive reporting by Nic from the al Qaeda tape library. In Explosive Force, you'll see innocent looking movie reels that really hide how to lessons on bomb making. And then on Friday, Face of Evil, what new scenes of Osama bin Laden tell us about the world's most wanted man.

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