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CNN Sunday Morning

Bin Laden Remains at Large

Aired February 24, 2002 - 07:04   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The war on terrorism continues, but a big question remains unanswered this morning and that is, of course, where is Osama bin Laden. Reports this weekend say that bin Laden may be hiding in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border area.

CNN's Chris Burns is in Karachi, Pakistan. He has more on bin Laden's possible whereabouts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Despite the pounding of Tora Bora's caves by U.S. airstrikes, despite U.S. attacks on Afghan villages, some killing innocent civilians, despite a $25 million U.S. government bounty on his head, Osama bin Laden's exact whereabouts remain a mystery.

Officials have repeatedly suggested the possible demise of the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks. But there are new reports that U.S. officials believe bin Laden is still alive somewhere in the vast, rugged, often lawless region straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Washington left it largely up to Pakistan's armed forces to patrol the region as the Taliban were collapsing and fleeing U.S. led airstrikes in Afghanistan late last year. Armed forces often ill- equipped, ill-trained, ill-paid, susceptible to bribery. And though Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S. effort that toppled al Qaeda backed Taliban rule in Afghanistan, there remains strong sympathies here for the groups.

Until September 11, Pakistan supported the Taliban in an effort to stabilize and exercise influence in Afghanistan. The sympathies extend among militant groups, including some linked to the kidnapped slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Sympathies believed as well among elements within Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. One reason Musharraf is reportedly seeking to rid the ISI of agents who have worked with militants in Afghanistan, militants once supported by U.S. policy during the Soviet occupation there.

ISI agents are also believed to have supported militants in the disputed Indian controlled province of Kashmir, which some reports list as another possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

So where is bin Laden? The search is getting increasingly complicated. U.S. officials don't rule out he may still be in Afghanistan. As civilian casualties mount from U.S. airstrikes there, that search or the way it's carried out is facing increasing criticism. And looking for him in Pakistan is not likely to be any easier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNS: The U.S. has the expressed support of General Musharraf, but can it count on that kind of cooperation throughout the Pakistani government. That perhaps is another story -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about another hunt. This is the hunt for the people linked to the killing of Daniel Pearl, "The Wall Street Journal" reporter, Chris. I do know that evidence of death, in a sadly ironic way, has kind of upped the efforts because they've taken off the constraints they might have had for concerns that he might be harmed. Any progress on that front? And there was a report yesterday that there might have a larger plot involved. Anything more on that?

BURNS: Well, exactly, the authorities here say they have redoubled their efforts in trying to find both the body of Daniel Pearl as well as those who kidnapped and killed him. And that, of course, implying that perhaps they can be a bit more aggressive in various ways in trying to find them.

The chief suspect that remains at large for them is Amjad Hussein Paruki (ph) and he's the one who they believe had been holding and perhaps have been kidnapped -- kidnapped and actually held Daniel Pearl. The other main suspect is behind bars. He name is Sheikh Omar Saeed. He's going to go before a judge tomorrow. We'll have to see what he says, but he is, up to now, investigators say that he has told them that harming American interests was his chief goal and that perhaps there could have been other plots that were underway. So there could more details about that. And in the meantime, the authorities and international entities here have boosted their security just to make sure.

O'BRIEN: Chris, a quick question for you. I'm not an expert on Pakistani law. How long can that suspect be held and under what pretext can he be held?

BURNS: Well, the decision of the judge tomorrow is to decide whether to leave him in police custody or to remand him over to judicial custody. Whatever the case, he will remain behind bars. And the judge then would take the evidence that was presented by the police tomorrow to decide whether he actually should be tried. It does look like there's a lot of mounting evidence to put him on trial.

O'BRIEN: All right, CNN's Chris Burns will be joining us a little bit later this morning to take some of your e-mails and phone calls. The subject being Daniel Pearl and for that matter, if you have questions about Osama bin Laden and the hunt for him, we invite you to send those as well, to wam@CNN.com. We'll have a phone number for you a little later. Now, let's talk a little bit more about the hunt for Osama bin Laden with a person we've talked an awful lot about it with in the past, Major General Don Shepperd, Retired of the U.S. Air Force joining us from Washington.

General Shepperd, good to have you with us again.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk, first of all, about this particular report and maybe we could bring up a map showing this region as we talk about it. We talked about this border many, many times you and I and you and others and how porous it is and how the allegiances can shift in the blink of an eye, how there's the opportunity for bribery from all fronts here. It makes it a very difficult place to draw any sort of conclusions. And it makes me wonder how valid this latest report in this morning's "New York Times" is. What -- would you give it any more credence than any of the other reports you've heard?

SHEPPERD: No, I wouldn't. This is reportedly from administration sources unnamed that say they have new reports that he's in the Afghan/Pakistan border area. Well, we've heard the same thing all along. He could be there. If we knew where he was and had a credible report, you can bet that we would be en route with bombs and also, Special Forces teams and perhaps even larger military operations. But the fact that they're not en route and there's no reports of them en route leads me to believe that there's no new credible evidence, another chapter in a long saga here, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Yes, long is the operative word here. Let's talk a little bit about the caves and this region in general. I know you have some familiarity in general with the region and specifically some of these caves, which are artifacts of the Soviet occupation, some of them built by the CIA, as a matter of fact, who helped the opposition to the Soviet regime there. In any case, an awful lot of places to hide there. Give us sense of -- we -- there was an awful lot of focus in this Tora Bora cave complex, but it goes beyond that, doesn't it?

SHEPPERD: Tora Bora is just one of the cave areas. There's hundreds, even thousands of caves and you can't attack them all. You can't send teams into all of them in a short of time. And even if you pay people to go look, most of them will, of course, be empty. But these are not caves in the traditional sense.

And it's true that we built them with CIA money. The CIA themselves did not build them. We acted as the quartermaster through Pakistan during that Soviet war. On the other hand, I've seen recent pictures and inside these caves, it's unbelievable -- steel I-beams, concrete reinforcement. These are really, really formidable places in which you can hide men and store equipment. You can store ammunition. You can store vehicles. Very, very formidable, Miles and again, very difficult to take down.

O'BRIEN: All right, we -- cognizant and hindsight is always 20/20. Let's do a little bit of Monday morning quarterbacking here. The decision was made immediately after things settled down in the Tora Bora region not to send Marine expeditionary units inside those caves to find out what's there whether it's corpses or living members of al Qaeda or the Taliban. And instead, the idea was to have the local warlords do the work. Well, basically, they took a walk on this. Should that be revisited? Should those caves be properly searched or is that just too hazardous for U.S. troops?

SHEPPERD: It's not that it's too hazardous. It's that there's too many and it was the only option really available to us. Remember, the whole idea in this Pakistan -- the Afghan campaign is -- has been to keep our footprints small, not put thousands of U.S. troops in there to be targets and turn the population against us. The most people we've had in Afghanistan at any one time is around 4,500 and even less.

So that doesn't give you a lot of troops to go out and search with. And it's real easy to get troops in. It's hard to protect them and get them out if things turned bad. So I think we proceeded in the -- in the way that was most logical, which is, if you have reasonable intelligence, send people in and pay other people to go in, but you simply can't search the whole area. It's a huge area, too many caves and I don't know any other way to do it other than the way we've gone about it.

O'BRIEN: All right, we're just about out of time, but I got to ask you one more question. There's a $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden's head and that is a tremendous amount of money for anybody, particularly somebody in Afghanistan. Why has that not generated more concrete clues, do you think?

SHEPPERD: Well, I think he's got a lot of friends and a lot of sympathy in the area and also, they don't know where he is. He's a very wily guy if he's still alive. Time is on our side. We will eventually find this man. We'll find Omar. We'll find the others. There's no doubt about that, but it may not be real soon -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, Major General Don Shepperd, our military analyst, joining us from Washington. As always, we appreciate your insights.

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