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CNN Sunday Morning

Secret al Qaeda Tapes May Be Useful to U.S. Military

Aired August 25, 2002 - 10:15   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Dozens of the tapes obtained by CNN show al Qaeda terrorists training for future attacks. The tapes give us some chilling insight into their techniques, and that information could be useful to the U.S. military. For more on that, we're joined now by CNN security analyst Kelly McCann. Thanks for being with us, Kelly, on this Sunday.
When you see these tapes and you look at the training of some of these al Qaeda members, what do you see? What should we learn from their training techniques?

KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: There's a couple of things, Anderson. One is, of course, the breadth of what they've been training for -- abductions, assassinations. Very interestingly, hard targets, in other words, banks, jails, it looks like, where they're -- one two, three.

COOPER: Yeah, we hear you, Kelly.

MCCANN: OK. And also, another thing that is interesting about these is the kind of intensity and the way that they're going about the training. If you look at it, they're using live ammunition in rock buildings without protection. And they're not flinching. They're concentrating through any pain and discomfort. So there's a treasure trove of information. It's just not that very obvious information that some people have been led to believe.

COOPER: That little bit that you mentioned right there, what does that tell you? That they're highly disciplined?

MCCANN: Not necessarily as disciplined as intense. In other words, discipline would go to their ability to stay cohesive under opposite pressure, in other words, as they're attacked. What it shows, though, is that they're intensely focused on mission attainment. And it's unlikely that, in fact, those tactics and techniques and procedures would run up against our Special Operations forces. The way they're being depicted in these videos, Anderson, would make me believe that they're going to be used against law enforcement agencies and organizations, security companies, places like that, where they would be very, very effective.

COOPER: How do you compare their techniques to the techniques that, say, our Special Forces are using now? I mean, are these guys behind the times, are they advanced? Where do you see them on that scale? MCCANN: From an individual skill level, you can notice that our troops will shoulder-mount their weapon and stay focused, using proper sighting tools to discriminately shoot. Conversely, you'll see these guys hold their weapons at their hips, kind of as a fulcrum, press the trigger and then spray, if you can imagine an ever-increasing arc. The hit probability goes way down, and it is, in fact, indiscriminate fire.

Now, the actual tactics, the general techniques that they're using are old techniques. You can find them in field manuals, old field manuals. Cleared sources, they are publicly available. So they're not state-of-the-art, but they're being conducted by men who are pretty intense.

COOPER: Does that also tell you that they're not afraid to use up ammunition, that they have plenty of supplies? I mean, if they're willing to indiscriminately fire, you know, just pull the trigger and just move the gun around, they would seem to be confident in their supplies capabilities?

MCCANN: In some of the tapes, we noticed that when they shoot a drill, they'd end up with their slides locked back to the rear, with handguns, say, which would indicate two things -- one, that maybe the instructors didn't trust them to be able to reload in close proximity to each other, or hat they were very, very careful not to use too much ammunition, which would go to the sophistication of the schoolhouse. In other words, they had specific amounts of ammunition allotted and didn't want to burn through that too quickly.

So it does show sophistication that they had a curriculum, they had instructors that would run multinational troops through, that they'd feed these men and move them from training site to training site. But the tactics are not terribly sophisticated.

COOPER: Is this basically what you'd expect from this group? I mean, you've seen a lot of these tapes. Any surprises for you, or is it pretty much what you expected?

MCCANN: Two interesting things. One is the integration of the use of motorcycles. A security overwatch is another surveillance and is what we call clean-up troops, in other words, redundancy. Once one group actually engages an opponent, the motorcycles would come through and throw a grenade or actually do cleanup shots, ensuring that everybody is dead.

And then the other thing that's interesting, that it does mimic most international forces, with one exception. You don't see these men practicing depth in defense. In other words, they're not defending. They're not holding stronghold points or anything like that. Almost all of the tapes concentrate on offensive techniques.

COOPER: The video that we're showing right now of intercepting an SUV, those seem like urban techniques more -- especially the use of motorcycles. You know, it's something you see sort of in Colombia, weaving through traffic, assassinations done on motorcycle, isn't it? MCCANN: Absolutely. As well as Greece and Italy as well, motorcycles have been used. Highly mobile, they can be used to drop off additional shooters, they can close off access roads, they can hold positions, and they can also, again, get into the mix if need be.

The big thing that you saw right there was, in fact, you know, probably in a rehearsal of an attack on a motorcade, a significant individual, where they were either going to abduct or assassinate him.

There are some inadequacies in the training. When we were doing urban techniques, you never see break-and-rake techniques, where they're encountering tempered glass or having to go through glass, so there are some training artificialities that we saw throughout all the tapes that would give them significant problems. And our troops are also obviously looking at these very closely, so that we'll identify vulnerabilities, that should it come to force on force, we'll be able to exploit them.

COOPER: And do you think there are vulnerabilities that an expert can see in these tapes that our military forces will be looking at and will learn from?

MCCANN: Absolutely. The method they carry their weapons, where the muzzles are pointed, how ready they are able to shoot in an unexpected situation.

For instance, two people turning a corner, where they've got their weapons, their handguns anyway, holstered, and how they carry them is very vulnerable. And some other techniques with their long guns.

So again, these tapes show people, a lot of what they thought they knew about al Qaeda, but it's not -- it shouldn't make people believe they're super human or supermen. They're, in fact, irregular troops who have had training and had access to weapons. But as they said to us in Afghanistan, they're going to make the desert run red with blood. It didn't happen. They didn't stack American skulls in caves, like they said over and over again. So they're vulnerable, and we'll exploit them.

COOPER: Kelly McCann, it's very interesting. Thanks very much for joining us this morning.

MCCANN: Thanks, Anderson.

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