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CNN Sunday Morning

Unlicensed Missiles Found at New Mexico Explosives Training School

Aired August 18, 2002 - 07:02   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A little more on our top story for you now. It's a disturbing development in light of the current threat of terrorism. Thousands of pounds of unlicensed missiles found at a New Mexico explosives training school.
CNN's Carol Lin gives us an update.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The company is called Heat (ph) for high-energy access tools and trains police departments and security and anti-terrorism companies. Police served a search warrant on the company's Roswell, New Mexico compound Thursday.

According to court documents, they found more than 2300 small, unregistered military missiles. They were in 49 crates, holding 48 missiles each and at more than $23,000 apiece, worth some $54 million. Arrested David Hudak, a Canadian citizen and president of the counter terrorism consulting firm.

He was charged with possessing firearms registered to him and with an immigration charge. Law enforcement sources say more charges are pending. According to the complaint, the warheads are designed as military weapons to be used to defeat light armored vehicles and or bunkers. The warheads are designed to be fired from shoulder mounted infantry weapons.

Authorities say no launching devices were found. Authorities also say they plan more searches in the coming days.

Carol Lin, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Federal prosecutors say the case against the owner of the explosives training company not a matter of terrorism, more a matter of licensing. Let's get some perspective on all of this for those of us who weren't too familiar with these sorts of schools. We turn to Mike Brooks who handles matters of law enforcement and terrorism for us.

Good to see you Mike.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to see you Miles. O'BRIEN: First of all, let's talk about the school that we've discovered here. The fact that it's in Roswell does not mean it's an alien concept necessarily. These things all over the country?

BROOKS: All over the country. It's almost a cottage industry with some former Special Forces, former law enforcement that start these schools up and sometimes they're funded by the State Department. We talked about some foreign national students, in this particular case, could be funded particularly by the State Department and by some other law enforcement agency.

O'BRIEN: So nothing illegal about setting up a facility ...

BROOKS: No.

O'BRIEN: ... where you teach people how to use explosives.

BROOKS: Not at all.

O'BRIEN: The key is to get your licenses from which agencies?

BROOKS: From the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. That's who regulates all explosives, their licensing. I mean it's not illegal to own these things as long as you pay the right amount of tax stamp. You know you have the tax stamp with this particular explosive, and as long as you have a need. And there have been many people; many law enforcement agencies go through schools like this every single day.

O'BRIEN: Well now, but give us a sense of how they're vetted, the owners of these -- presumably the ATF isn't just accepting a tax stamp and the money. They're checking these people out.

BROOKS: Right. They have to go through a background check. Now this particular -- Mr. Hudak is apparently a Canadian national. You know my -- the whole thing I talk about all the time is great, you can do a background check, but if someone comes into the United States from another country, whether it be Canada or from a Middle Eastern country, somewhere else, they're not going to have a criminal background. So if they do a background check, what does that show? You know that they have never been arrested here in the United States. They also go back and usually do an intelligence check, run it through different databases at the ATF, the FBI, CIA to see if there's any background there, especially when you're dealing with explosives. But apparently Mr. Hudak did not have any ...

O'BRIEN: Now many students Saudis, of course the fact that they're Saudis, of course, think of 9/11. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers Saudi nationals. How carefully vetted these days are these students in these schools? The INS was discovered to be in complete disarray post 9/11. A lot has been done to try to organize things, but where do they stand right now?

BROOKS: Well if these are Saudi students or they just feel they walked in off the street from Saudi Arabia or they actually Saudi military or Saudi law enforcement. That's usually the case. It's usually law enforcement or military that are sponsored by the U.S. government to come here to go to some of these schools.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's look at the weaponry, some of the weaponry that was discovered there. We're going to go to the site, the Federation of American Scientists, which is a great resource by the way, FAS.org if you want to find out about military weaponry in the United States arsenal. This is the M-141. Give us a sense of the scale here, as we look at this picture on here Mike. Is it a big weapon?

BROOKS: It's not very big at all. It's a shoulder fired -- shoulder-fired weapon with the warhead, the warhead, if you will, is fairly small. It's used to defeat light armor and concrete bunkers.

O'BRIEN: OK.

BROOKS: So it's not -- we're not talking a, you know, a LAW (ph) rocket here or you know, a Soviet-made RPG-7, something like that. It's for light armor.

O'BRIEN: All right, it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination post 9/11 to view these as potential terrorist training camps that might be in our mist. Could they be?

BROOKS: Sure. Well they could be. You know and the other thing to ask, was this -- you know, were they all Saudis? All Yemenis that are in this camp, or are they sprinkled in with other American students? You know with other law enforcement, military students. I think that's what you'd probably find in this particular case.

O'BRIEN: What does your gut tell you on this one? Is this a simple matter of licensing? There's apparently a disgruntled employee, former employee in the mix here.

BROOKS: Right.

O'BRIEN: What does your gut tell you?

BROOKS: Well I'd like to know more about it. I think most of these schools are reputable. It tells me that it probably is a licensing problem. Somebody was a little ticked off at someone and dropped, you know, dropped the dime on them because of licensing problems and some immigration problems. But it remains to be seen. I'd like to know a little bit more about it.

O'BRIEN: It's safe to say, though, there's additional scrutiny focused on these schools as we speak.

BROOKS: Well we talked about flight schools, you know, after 9/11, that nobody was taking a look at flight schools. How closely scrutinized are schools like this around the country. They're, you know, they pop up all over the place. I get -- being in law enforcement, being a former emergency response team member, and Special Operations, I used to get ads about these new schools all the time. You got to trade shows, law enforcement military trade shows, and you hear about schools like this. You know how close are we scrutinizing these schools? O'BRIEN: Good question. Mike Brooks, thanks for your insights. We appreciate it.

BROOKS: Thank you Miles.

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