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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview with Mike Brooks

Aired May 19, 2002 - 08:04   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: An FBI official is telling CNN the agency is asking apartment managers across the nation to be on the alert for suspicious activity. The official is saying there are indications al Qaeda leaders discussed the possibility of renting apartments and rigging them with explosives. No specific cities or regions are mentioned. In fact, we're told there's no indication that the proposed plot has moved beyond the talking stage, which leads us to our expert here, Mike Brooks, who is a law enforcement veteran and has worked on antiterrorism task force for years and years.

Good to have you with us, Mike.

MIKE BROOKS, FORMER FBI TERRORISM TASK FORCE: Good to be here, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about this apartment plot one more time. It's so vague as if to be useless, in a way; nevertheless, intelligence community now feels compelled to put this kind of information out.

BROOKS: I think we're now -- we're in a -- in an era of full disclosure. There's nothing specific -- again, nothing specific at all. This information was given to the FBI joint terrorism task forces around the country to go out and give the information to people who owned apartment buildings. The information, where is it coming from, how good is the information, that's what has to be asked. Some of this information could be coming from the interviews they're doing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where these al Qaeda terrorists or suspected terrorists are being housed. And you know because there's FBI and CIA officials down there doing interviews and the information we have to be careful because the information could in fact be false flags. They could be doing this just to stir up, you know, ancs (ph) within the U.S. population.

O'BRIEN: Well how do you separate the wheat from the chaff then?

BROOKS: Well you got to -- you have to take that information, take other information from other interviews they've conducted over the past, other information they're getting from signals intelligence, from satellite overhears, wire -- legal wiretap overhears, human intelligence, take them to see if there's any links between all the intelligence and try to put it all together. Again, it's like a big puzzle with a lot of different pieces and try to put all those pieces together. O'BRIEN: Now in Kathleen Koch's piece just a moment ago, it was rather ominous when she said that the crescendo of chatter was reminiscent of what they saw in retrospect pre-9/11. How much credence should we put into that? Just the volume of the talk should make us more concerned perhaps?

BROOKS: Well intelligence officials and analysts, they will -- they will take this chatter and some of it they'll have specific information about, some of it they won't, but they'll see a lot more communications between areas. And a lot of this will be overhears, a lot of it is which -- that's where they get the chatter from, and they'll take this information, try to piece it together. But again, it's very -- it's not specific right now and apparently it's kind of fragmented. So again, with the -- they'll try to take this and look at it with a more vague -- you know a fine tooth comb and go through the information.

O'BRIEN: Well tell me how differently things might or might not progress post-9/11 given what we know and what the chatter is telling them? Do they have more, well quite frankly, liberties to go after wiretaps and that sort of thing when they get this sort of information with the Constitution still applies, right?

BROOKS: Absolutely. And the FBI specifically did it because they have the responsibility for investigating terrorism in the United States and abroad against Americans. They're kind -- they are guided by a set of guidelines that are very strict and they call it -- it's the attorney general guidelines, you just can't go out.

We talked about the Phoenix memo earlier, that the Phoenix memo it might have had a list of information, a list of names. You just can't go out and take a wiretap and put it on these -- on these people's phones. You have to find out if there is any criminal activity and that's what the whole -- that's what the main piece is about, is there criminal activity. You just can't go out and violate people's civil rights.

O'BRIEN: But having said all of that, there's an entirely different tone and tenor in this country right now and there probably are judges who might be more lenient toward an FBI request for a wiretap. Do you suspect that there's more aggressive use of these tactics right now and shouldn't there be?

BROOKS: I don't -- I don't think there are. The Justice Department, again, has to -- they have to make sure that they're going by the guidelines. If they gain information that is and they garner information that's gotten by illegal use, then that's not going to be of any good. There's not going to be -- can't use it in court.

O'BRIEN: To what extent are we hampered by laws that are anachronisms? For instance, you can get these disposable cellular phones which make it difficult to get a wiretap order because they used to be affixed to a single number and a single line. Are we at a situation now where the technology is -- well the technology is often ahead of the law. Is the technology ahead of the law to the extent where it's -- these agents are hampered too much? BROOKS: Well the technology I think is starting to catch up. We just saw recently with the -- with the bomber -- the mailbox bomber in the Midwest, the reason to how they caught him, he was using a cell phone and they were able to track his cell phone by his location using satellites and some other sophisticated technology. So I think we're -- it's kind of catching up a little bit. But you know disposable cell phones, those kinds of things aren't being used that much.

We go back to bin Laden and we go back to the embassy bombing case where there were actually records in Africa in -- after the embassy bombings in Nairobi that were found when he was using his satellite phone. You know there were links to certain organizations. So I think technology is kind of catching up with it.

O'BRIEN: Of course one of the big raps on intelligence in the U.S. is that it has relied too much on technology in the past and not enough on human intelligence. Do you get the sense that that is changing, particularly post-9/11? Is there a phrase (ph) -- for example, more diversity in the FBI and more of language literacy allowing them to conduct these investigations more effectively?

BROOKS: Well the FBI has -- was hampered by having people who aren't -- weren't native speakers in Arabic, Farsi, a lot of some of the other different Middle East dialects. They are recruiting heavily in that community. And I think that again you know it's hard to get assets to -- hard to get sources if you don't speak the language. You know it's -- you know a white Anglo Saxon like yourself (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you try to go in and get into the Middle Eastern community, the Arab community into another country, it's very difficult to do. But the FBI knows -- I know one agent who's a native of Lebanon and does a fantastic job on developing assets and developing sources.

O'BRIEN: All right Mike Brooks, that's not your last visit. Go get another cup of coffee and when you come back we'll take your e- mails. We've already gotten some good ones for you. And I'm not going to give you any heads up on them because we want you to be able to take the high hard ones and hit them out of the park all right?

BROOKS: Looking forward to it.

O'BRIEN: Mike Brooks, our terrorism analyst and expert, we appreciate you being with us.

Well just how serious is this new terror threat? That is the issue up for discussion the next hour on CNN. As we just mentioned, we will be welcoming your e-mail. It is appropriately addressed to WAM -- W-A-M -- @CNN.com. Nine a.m. Eastern hour is when we'll put Mike Brooks to the test with those questions and your phone calls as well.

You can also keep up with the latest developments on this story on the Web, of course. The address, as always, is CNN.com.

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