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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Michael Elliott

Aired September 15, 2002 - 10:06   ET

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

CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: And now let's get some more details about that "Time" magazine report on the scope of al Qaeda's operations and the man who now says that he was the terror network's top operative in southeast Asia.
The magazine apparently obtained a top secret CIA and regional intelligence report and that it has provided some new details about Omar al-Faruq. He's a terrorist suspect captured by government agents back in June.

Michael Elliott is "Time" magazine's editor-at-large. Thanks for being with us this morning.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TIME MAGAZINE: Good to be here, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: It's a terrific article on exactly what the magazine was able to learn from these documents about al-Faruq. We should say he has actually been in custody for some three months now -- just beginning to talk.

I guess three months of interrogation finally wore him down with sleep deprivation and those types of things.

Gave enough information to place U.S. authorities on alert.

ELLIOTT: Absolutely. As you say he was originally picked up in June in Indonesia. He was then interrogated at the U.S. air base in Bagram in Afghanistan.

And wherever he is now he finally started really confessing the details of his engagement with al Qaeda just at the beginning of this week on Monday.

CALLAWAY: Of course ...

ELLIOTT: What he told investigators then was that he had been asked by two extremely senior Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah, who we have all heard of, to plan attacks on U.S. embassies and other facilities to coincide with the September the 11th anniversary.

And he also told investigators that despite the fact that he was in custody, he had left, as it were, others to carry on the work for him. CALLAWAY: Yeah -- that was disturbing that he said that there were back-up operatives in place to carry out the plan should something happen to him.

And indeed after these revelations we saw the threat orange placed in the U.S. and abroad.

ELLIOTT: Well, I think one can reasonably surmise, Catherine, that it was that last piece of information -- the fact that he had left the network in place, which he said was ready to carry on these operations even though he was in custody, that was most significant in tripping the switch to code orange.

CALLAWAY: And according to these documents, we're not talking about a single plan here -- we're talking about numerous plans against numerous targets across southeast Asia, which really showed the broad reach of Al Qaeda.

ELLIOTT: That's absolutely right. The plans go into extraordinary detail in terms of the reach of Al Qaeda's operations -- Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia -- a whole host of different sorts of operations that the documents talk about including plans to assassinate President Megawati in Indonesia, including discussions of whether to do a USS Cole operation on a U.S. naval ship visiting the region, bombings of churches in Indonesia. These are ...

CALLAWAY: And the list goes on -- right.

ELLIOTT: No question.

CALLAWAY: And it shows also that -- how the al Qaeda network has indeed now moved in to southeast Asia -- believing now that they may have the highest concentration of al Qaeda members outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ELLIOTT: That's absolutely right. Investigators have been saying for quite a few months now that they thought there was a large Al Qaeda concentration in southeast Asia. I think the story that we've done this week absolutely confirms that.

The key thing that's happening here, Catherine, is that what used to be local groups ...

CALLAWAY: Right.

ELLIOTT: ... which were involved, for example, with Indonesia in masses or with Malaysia in campaigns or what have you -- have increasingly been infiltrated by al Qaeda, made to work together and now see their mission not just in local terms but also in striking against the interests of the U.S. That's the big change.

CALLAWAY: Yeah -- you can see from these documents how they are taking these desperate, seemingly unrelated groups have now infiltrated them. And now they're taking this little bit of information and they're able to connect the dots in this as in a complicated web of Al Qaeda now that we're now seeing develop. ELLIOTT: Well -- yeah. There are some -- there's some good news for us in this because although linking these groups together, which was Al Qaeda's genius, if you can use that word for a terrorist organization, made them stronger.

It also meant that once we got, as it were, one end of the tapestry we could -- or the weave -- sorry -- my analogy isn't very good. We could pull it and it would unravel.

CALLAWAY: Right.

ELLIOTT: And that's rather what's been happening as we get a hold of two or three or four big fish we find that we have -- when we interrogate them -- when we check out the numbers on their cell phones ...

Cell phones -- wonderful things for interrogators because they store all of these numbers.

CALLAWAY: Right.

ELLIOTT: We then find that they have contacts in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Brunei, in the Philippines, maybe back in Kuwait, in Yemen ...

CALLAWAY: Michael, you're so involved in this you're starting to lose your impartiality on covering this.

This also shows -- what this document shows -- is how U.S. intelligence are working. And when they do get that bit of information that they were able to follow it through and to work with the counterparts in the other countries. So that is, as you said, the one positive thing we're seeing in this.

ELLIOTT: And I don't think there is any doubt that cooperation between those other countries in southeast Asia and between all of them and the U.S. has increased exponentially in the last year. That's the unseen victory in the war on terrorism.

We're used to seeing special forces in Afghanistan. We're used to seeing bang bang and bomb blasts and tracer bullets.

What we don't see is the quiet work that goes on beneath the surface with law enforcement authorities around the world cooperating against terrorism to a level and degree ...

CALLAWAY: Right.

ELLIOTT: ... and to a degree that they've absolutely never done before.

CALLAWAY: Yes -- it's interesting to put all of the dots together. Michael Elliott -- thank you very much -- "Time Magazine's" Editor-at-Large. Thanks for being with us again.

ELLIOTT: OK, Catherine. CALLAWAY: Bye, bye.

ELLIOTT: Bye, bye.

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