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American Morning

Raging Wildfires; A Helping Hand; Hunting for Osama

Aired December 29, 2005 - 08:33   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: In Texas and Oklahoma, People who escaped the wildfires say they were surprised at how fast the fires moved. Traci Weaver is with the Texas Forest Service. She's in Cross Plains, where scores of homes were destroyed.
Good morning.

TRACI WEAVER, TEXAS FOREST SERVICE: Good morning. How are you, Carol?

COSTELLO: I'm pretty good. Probably a lot better than you are, because I'm sure you're exhausted by now.

Let's talk about how fast the fire moves, because people have died in these fires. There are reports some people were trying to, you know, douse their lawns with water from their garden hoses and then the fire overtook them. Tell me how fast these fires can move?

WEAVER: It's amazing. They can move just miles in minutes, practically, and you know, people don't have time to get out of the way, and especially when looking at a grass fire. Grass fires and a strong wind can spread incredibly fast, faster than you can run for sure.

COSTELLO: Well, I'm going to read you an excerpt from a local newspaper. This is about a couple who was outside in the lawn, trying to douse their lawn with water to stop the fire. This is the husband. He said, "I heard her holler," his wife, "but didn't seem like she was in trouble." "After I finished I looked for her and hollered but didn't see her. The smoke cleared and she was down. She didn't have a hose or anything. I don't know what she was doing, to be honest." It all happened in three minutes.

So tell people, should they try to stop these fires? Or should they just get out?

WEAVER: They really need to get out. Nobody's home is worth their lives. I mean, they really need to take steps in advance of a fire. I mean, long before fire is threatening your home, there is steps you can take so that it will survive a fire on its own.

COSTELLO: Well, do those steps involve -- I think I can still hear you -- I think I might have lost your audio. But can you hear me, Traci?

WEAVER: I can.

COSTELLO: Oh, good.

Well, let me ask you about those steps, because as we've mentioned a lot of people are outside using their garden hose to get the grass wet. Is that one of the steps you take to protect your home?

No, there's steps you can take long before there's even a wildfire threatening your home. By removing leaves off your roofs, making sure your grass is mowed short, there's no volatile vegetation or wood piles right up against your home. If people would go to firewise.org and look at that Web site, it will give them all sorts of tips.

But waiting until a fire is bearing on you is not the time to try to get out there and save your house.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about how things are looking this morning. I mean, what's still on fire? Is the fire still moving? Parts of the fire, is it contained?

WEAVER: It is actually contained within our control lines. There's a lot of smoke and hot spots in the interior of this fire, but we feel like we've got control lines around it where it won't spread beyond the burned area right now. We are still working the fire up in Cook County that's 6,000 acres and it's only about 70 percent contained right now.

COSTELLO: Any more homes in danger?

WEAVER: Not right at the moment, but you know, as daylight hours pass and they started looking, they have raised the number of homes lost to 96 just on this fire alone in Cross Plains.

COSTELLO: And how many deaths are they estimating happened because of these fires?

WEAVER: Two here in Cross Plains and one up in Cook County, and I believe one also in Oklahoma.

COSTELLO: Are there more evacuations under way?

WEAVER: I believe everybody's been allowed to come back home. There's no current evacuations. Of course we're concerned about conditions coming up through this weekend, and with it being a holiday weekend, people using fireworks, we're concerned about the coming few days.

COSTELLO: Traci Weaver from the Texas Forest Service joining us this morning. Thanks so much.

WEAVER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Our senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been in Pakistan visiting the region where thousands of earthquake survivors are living in tents. They've lived that way since early October when an earthquake turned their world upside down. Sanjay tells us about one man's effort to help those who lost everything but their lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On October 9th, just one day after the earthquake, Colonel Ahmad Faraz straight to the epicenter. When he arrived, the Allai Valley was a bloody, muddy, broken mess. Amid criticism that the Pakistani army was too slow to act, Faraz and a small group of troops are assigned to turn Allai Valley into a safe refuge for tens of thousands of people.

The valley is in northwest Pakistan. It is among the most remote and difficult to reach places in all of Asia. To understand what was happening to the people here meant paying the colonel a visit. We started by car. Bone crushing hours in a small van.

(on camera): So we are traveling through the mountains here near a place called Bahd (ph), one of the worst hit areas by the earthquake and you can't escape it. It's inescapable all around us that the devastation by the earthquake. All these buildings.

(voice-over): And impossible to travel by car to areas higher up in the mountains. Landslides have destroyed many of these ancient roads beyond repair.

A helicopter was the only way to get to the colonel. Though these mountains look desolate, hundreds of thousands of people live here. Tens of thousands have already died. Many of them children.

Many more are still alive, but profoundly vulnerable. After surviving untreated injuries, dehydration, starvation and outbreaks of disease, there is now a good chance untold numbers could freeze to death.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, you know, first they are saved (ph) and then families and then again and again. I think in the fifth week, fifth week of this camp, I have 16,000 people. And still people are coming.

GUPTA: Many of the people have never left their small plots of land. Getting them to come to the safety of this camp meant thinking like they do. That means Colonel Faraz and the private aid agencies working here are caring for not only for these people but also for their livelihood.

(on camera): A lot of these people would not come out of the mountains to camps like this unless they bring the animals with them. Their livestock. That is the livelihood. And so many places -- we heard this over and over again, they treat the livestock better than their own children in some ways. They're not only members of their family but they are also a significant source of income and what this organization has done save the children, USAID actually create a place not only to keep the animals warm and safe from the element but also to provide them food.

And that was a big incentive to actually allow those families come down here. They continue to come. Make no mistake. There has been a long deep distrust of the military by the mountaineers. Yet they still line up because they believe in Faraz.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look how organized they are.

GUPTA: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can talk with them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

GUPTA: He says thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. He is helping this tent village. Thank you very much.

GUPTA: They're learning Urdu, the official Pakistani language. And the camp is working. This is the largest refugee camp in Pakistan. We saw absolutely no violence or looting. In fact, as soon as I met the colonel, I was reminded of another military leader who changed the tenor of the relief effort in New Orleans. General Russell Honore.

GENERAL RUSSELL HONORE, U.S. NATIONAL GUARD: Put those weapons down. You're delivering food.

GUPTA: Both men have proved a critically important point about relief. Money and resources alone won't promise success. Effective relief depends on strong leadership.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this? What is this?

CROWD: Chin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this?

CROWD: Nose.

CROWD: Eyes.

CROWD: Eyebrows.

GUPTA: Turns out, saving lives wasn't Faraz's only agenda. He wanted to tackle something much more profound. He hopes this tragedy can help bring Pakistan into the 21st century, learning new languages and changing the culture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Sanjay. OK. She will tell you the national anthem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Urdu)

So this is -- this is the children. This is what I want to show you. The people. Look at their faces. Everybody is happy.

GUPTA: Of course, you are just seeing a small slice of the relief in Pakistan. And surely, not everyone is happy. Forty-five- year-old Reyaz Mohammed (ph) was injured in the earthquake. He began having fits or seizures. The volunteer nurses who will alone see more than 200 patients today are at a loss.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fifteen minutes ago, and I see one just now like this.

GUPTA: Everyone is recruited to help.

(on camera): This is a big problem around here. You are seeing patients that have no history. Their CAT scans, all their records were actually destroyed by the earthquake. They show up here, as this gentlemen did, with a seizure and nobody knows what to do in this case.

You can just drink this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. That's good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK?

GUPTA: Tastes pretty good.

(voice-over): Colonel Faraz knows he can't take care of Mohammed and many of the sick and needy in Pakistan. But he will do what he can to provide clean water, warm tents and basic hygiene. Most of the people here use toilets before?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never seen any -- I mean, surely, it's a clean area. No smell.

GUPTA: Right. There is no smell.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sixteen thousand people. It's a very big community.

GUPTA: He dreams of much more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we are going to have a toilets and bathrooms in the tents. This is going to be the metropolitan city, not Islamabad.

GUPTA: This is going to be a metropolitan city?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

GUPTA (voice-over): Given the need and suffering here, Colonel Faraz is determined to make it possible.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Allai Valley, Pakistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: You can see more of Sanjay's reports from Pakistan on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" weeknights at 10:00 Eastern, 7:00 Pacific.

Coming up on our program, did the U.S. miss a chance to capture Osama bin Laden? A former CIA field commander makes that claim in a new book. Does he have the evidence? We'll ask him.

COSTELLO: And later, we're "Minding Your Business." Today great news for people in the market for a new house. Stick around for AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? Most intelligence and military types would tell you he is hiding out in the rugged, lawless mountains along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, which is precisely where he was believed to be in the closing days of the U.S. assault in Afghanistan after 9/11. A matter of fact, the U.S. might have been ever so close to getting bin Laden, in a place called Tora Bora. Remember that name?

But our next guest suggests Washington blinked. He is the author of a new book, "Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al Qaeda." His name is Gary Berntsen and he's a former undercover CIA agent.

Gary, good to have you with us.

GARY BERNTSEN, AUTHOR, "JAWBREAKER": Pleasure to be here with you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: You were there in Tora Bora, clandestine CIA operative at that point and you were very close to Osama bin Laden, you believe. How do you know that?

BERNTSEN: Well, we tracked bin Laden -- after the collapse of Kabul, we were receiving regular reports, intelligence reports, from the Northern Alliance intel service that we had worked with and trained, you know, intermittently as we traveled in and out of Afghanistan over the years. And that human reporting, which helped us win the war -- and we had some intercepts from a radio that we picked up off an Qaeda -- a dead al Qaeda fighter. And we listened to bin Laden, you know, apologize to his people, pray with his people.

O'BRIEN: So you heard Osama bin Laden on a radio, which would have a limited range?

BERNTSEN: Oh, yes.

O'BRIEN: So, by inference, you were pretty close. How close?

BERNTSEN: Well, we were very close. When -- once my team got to the foot of the mountains, they -- a four-man team scaled the mountains, got up over the top of 800 to 1,000 of bin Laden and his folks and spent 56 hours straight calling in air strikes on them. We threw a 15,000 pound blue 82 at him.

O'BRIEN: Big bombs.

BERNTSEN: We've had 52 -- big bomb, biggest thing in our inventory, you know, shy of a nuclear device. And -- but he continued to throw, you know, other Muslims out in front of him to save his own skin. O'BRIEN: All right. And ultimately, lived to tell the tale, unfortunately.

BERNTSEN: Correct.

O'BRIEN: What would have captured bin Laden, in that circumstance? What did you want?

BERNTSEN: Well, you know, early in December, I had requested the introduction of U.S. ground troops -- you know, 600 to 800 rangers. And what we wanted to do is throw them in between bin Laden and the border, to try to trap him before he could get too close to the passes. And of course we didn't get that.

O'BRIEN: Why didn't you get it?

BERNTSEN: Well, it was a rapidly evolving situation. It would have required significant risks, probably would have been casualties. And the military wanted to do air strikes.

O'BRIEN: All right. I got to share with our viewers -- this is a quote from Tommy Franks back in 2004.

He says this: "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured. But Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp."

How do you jive that account there from Tommy Franks, who was head of the troops at the time.

BERNTSEN: Tommy Franks is a great American. He was in Tampa, you know, in charge of CentCom. I was on the ground. I was the man providing the intelligence to the military and to the CIA.

O'BRIEN: That must have been incredibly frustrating.

BERNTSEN: Oh, yes.

O'BRIEN: What does that tell you about the U.S. resolve in the war on terror?

BERNTSEN: Well, it was -- let me say this about U.S. resolve. We did have special forces teams, Delta Force went in and they fought like lions. It was a rapidly evolving situation; they just didn't want to bite on that at that point. And it was unfortunate because we could have ended it, but...

O'BRIEN: For whatever reason -- because of the risk or whatever the case may be?

BERNTSEN: Possibly, yes.

O'BRIEN: What -- let me ask you this. Do you think things have changed? Has a lesson been learned? BERNTSEN: Oh, definitely, lessons were learned there. I mean, you could see in Operation Anaconda, you know, they threw U.S. forces in hard and fast. And in Iraq, again, you know, the U.S. military is a dynamic -- it's the greatest fighting force that's ever existed.

O'BRIEN: So the lesson has been learned, you think?

BERNTSEN: Lessons have been learned, yes. But it was unfortunate. It was a hard way to learn that lesson.

O'BRIEN: So if presented with that opportunity again, you think there wouldn't be a repeat?

BERNTSEN: They'd throw him in.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about getting this book. This was very difficult. We'll share with viewers -- they call this redacting. That's kind of a euphemism for, you know, censoring. Now, you of course have access. You take a look at this typical couple of pages in your book. The CIA has to approve books by former CIA people.

BERNTSEN: Correct.

O'BRIEN: We understand that.

BERNTSEN: Right.

O'BRIEN: You ran into quite a bit of difficulty. Why?

BERNTSEN: Well, part of the problem was Mike Scheuer had written "Imperial Hubris" and there was a lot of controversy around that. And I think there was a strong effort to sort of suppress any books by ex- employees. And so that was one thing.

Second thing was, you know, I was -- there had been -- they had allowed other authors -- Steven Cole (ph), Bob Woodward had written, you know, items about my operations. They allowed them to write, they wouldn't let me write.

O'BRIEN: Because of what?

BERNTSEN: Well, because they wanted to suppress people writing books. You know, there's been a change there and I can understand that. But if they're going to allow other authors to dedicate an entire chapter about -- you know, to me, I should have a chance to go ahead and set the record straight.

O'BRIEN: All right. With all due respect here, we've read time and again about the failings of human intelligence in -- certainly in the run up to 9/11 and certainly post-9/11 in some cases. How could we be so certain that what you say is true, given all the problems we've seen with intelligence?

BERNTSEN: A small number of American intelligence officers and special forces officers working together won a war against -- you know, maybe roughly 100 or so intelligence officers, 350 S.F. people won a war against 60 to 70,000 Taliban and, you know, 8,000 al Qaeda members on the ground. I think that's sufficient evidence. I have faith in Porter Goss. I think Goss is good for the agency and will enhance the...

O'BRIEN: So the agency's on the right track?

BERNTSEN: I think Goss is on the right track.

O'BRIEN: All right, Gary Berntsen, former undercover CIA agent. He's out with the book "Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al Qaeda." It's a fascinating read in between the blackened portions. Maybe next -- on a later edition, if the court cases go well, we'll see the full picture.

BERNTSEN: Thank you. It's been a pleasure being with you today.

O'BRIEN: All right, good to have you with us. Carol?

COSTELLO: Coming up, are looking to buy a new house? We've got some great news for you in "Minding Your Business." That's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

COSTELLO: Be sure to check out our web site, CNN.com, for the latest on this morning's top stories, including, of course, the big wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma. They're in for another tough day, although the fires have been contained in Texas at the moment, but we're just hoping that continues.

Also at CNN.com, the most popular stories, including this accused Nazi ordered deported from the Cleveland area, John Demjanjuk. Now this has been in the works what for decades.

O'BRIEN: I think it dates back literally to the '70s, I really do. And you know, you'll recall there was a very famous trial, I think, it was mid-'80s when he was actually convicted, and at one point he was sentenced to death, is that right, or faced -- I can't remember.

COSTELLO: I can't remember all the details. But finally, he may be deported to the Ukraine. He is now 85 years old. And if you're about to head out the door for work or school, you can stay in touch with CNN and AMERICAN MORNING by logging on to CNN.com and our pipeline video service. You can catch live commercial-free news updates. It's all there at CNN.com/pipeline.

O'BRIEN: Coming up on the program, a lot of small businesses around Ground Zero desperately need government loans after 9/11, but they couldn't get them. So how and why did a Utah dog boutique and a radio station in South Dakota get the money? We'll explain, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

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