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CNN Sunday Morning
Detainee Links Seattle's Militant Muslims With Radical London Mosque
Aired July 14, 2002 - 07:02 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: Back at the top of the news, the threat of terror here at home. "The Seattle Times" is reporting a British Taliban fighter being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has provided some crucial information linking a group of Seattle-based militant Muslims and a radical mosque in London. That report says in November of '99 two men from the London mosque scouted out a ranch in Bly, Oregon as a potential al Qaeda training camp. Some members of the Seattle group were living there at the time including Semi Osman, a one-time cleric at a now defunct Seattle mosque. He's now in federal custody charged with an immigration violation.
According to "The Times," federal prosecutors say that the immigration violation was committed in support of international terrorism. Let's get some more insight, put this all in perspective. For that, we turn to a familiar face, Kelly McCann, our security expert joining us from Washington. Good to have you with us again, Kelly.
KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Hey, Miles.
O'BRIEN: First of all, let's talk about the source here, an interview in Guantanamo Bay. We've been hearing sometimes conflicting information, sometimes quite frankly very bad intelligence coming out of there, disinformation, if you will. How much credence should we put into this particular one?
MCCANN: Well, like anything, an interview produces information and it doesn't become intelligence until it goes through the cycle, which, you know, has collaborative and disassociated sources that say the same kinds of things. So anything that we get from an individual, it's got to be bounced against other information that we have through signals intelligence, communications intelligence, et cetera. And I would imagine that they have done that if its now been, you know, widely disseminated. So, I think this is probably pretty good.
O'BRIEN: All right now, you mentioned that it's widely disseminated. Would the intelligence community prefer we're not talking about this?
MCCANN: That's a difficult question. I mean, truthfully if they don't want you to talk about it, then you wouldn't know it because all of this is, of course, you're libel to prosecution if you let secrets out or say things about things you shouldn't. So I think that, in fact, they're probably more interested in letting the bad guys that we know a lot more about them than they thought we know to kind of limit their activities and also to encourage the U.S. citizenry that they're working hard.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about this possibility of training camps or at least one camp in this case. Is that a likely scenario? I mean given all that we know about al Qaeda and how well funded and organized the organization is, I guess it should come as no surprise that that would be something they would attempt.
MCCANN: Sure. I mean, think about the size of the United States and how many places and rural areas that these kinds of camps could be used. Now one thing it does work at odds is if you go to a very rural place, it would be difficult to have foreign appearing people there and then associated with gunfire, et cetera. But certainly for meeting sites and all of that, I don't think that you'd see a recurring training camp. I think what you'd see is training events and then probably move to another place and then move to another place yet again.
O'BRIEN: I see. So to set up camp in one place would arouse suspicion ultimately, but in the case of a rural area, where people have a lot of firearms, hunting, target practice, whatever the case may be, just gunfire in and of itself is not enough to tip anything off?
MCCANN: That's correct. You know what's an interesting point here too, Miles, is the insidious nature of these guys to use mosques as a center to run activities. Now if you think about it, back in Afghanistan during the war, even during the bombing, a lot of the Taliban leadership hid in mosques because they know that that's unpalatable to the Americans to do that. A couple of months ago the FBI talked about having more access to mosques and again, it was unpalatable to a lot of people who should have known better because, in fact, they're using the mosques and the ability to merge religion in order to hide in plain view. So it -- that's an issue we're going to have to struggle with, and I think it's going to be unacceptable to a lot of Muslims worldwide.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about why the Pacific Northwest might apparently have been chosen here. It seems as if there's perhaps more activity out there for al Qaeda. I'm hearkening back to the plot to blow up Los Angeles Airport on the millennium. All of that filtered down to Vancouver, through Seattle, and down to the West Coast. As I understand it, there's a fairly healthy Middle Eastern population there that might allow people to hide better. Give us a sense as why the West, the Pacific Northwest in particular, would be a focal point for al Qaeda perhaps.
MCCANN: Well, you've got rugged terrain. You've got the ability to mask things, a camp or a training area from overhead flights because of the nature of the terrain. You have a porous border between the Northwest and Canada, very difficult to control when you're talking about man-packed, you know, logistics coming across the border. It has all the elements and for years some of the more radical right-fringe has operated up there and given the FBI much difficulty. So that area does lend itself to hidden activity.
O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, who weighs in with us frequently on matters of national security intelligence. Thank you very much for being with us. As always, we appreciate it.
MCCANN: You bet, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right, we'll see you soon.
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