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CNN Saturday Morning News

Investigators Attempt to Understand al Qaeda

Aired September 22, 2001 - 09:22   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.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: The investigation into these terrorist attacks continues around the world. Investigators are trying to find out as much as they can about Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.

Our own Mike Boettcher has looked into the details of this secret organization.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Al Qaeda operates more as a corporate holding company, except its business is terror and war. Osama bin Laden is its chairman, the emir general.

MAGNUS RAINSTORP, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: In terms of his power base, bin Laden and al Qaeda have emerged as a very sophisticated and well-organized organization that is more like a multinational enterprise.

BOETTCHER: Below bin Laden is al Qaeda's governing council, known as the Majlis al-Shura, which is composed of 20 to 30 members. The two top members of the Majlis al-Shura are, according to intelligence sources, Ayman Zawahiri, bin Laden's likely successor, and Mohamed Atef.

Zawahiri is Egypt's most-wanted man, accused of leading an Egyptian terror group known as al-Jihad. Atef is military commander.

RAINSTORP: One of the things that bin Laden has been successful is to delegate responsibility to some of his senior lieutenants. Many of those lieutenants, even if bin Laden were to be assassinated, would still mean that the organization would survive, would be able to function.

BOETTCHER: Below the governing al-Shura, al Qaeda subdivides into four departments. Religious, which issues bin Laden's fatwas or religious edicts, for example, calling for holy wars. Department two is media, which puts out a weekly newspaper called "Newscast" and promotional videotapes. The next department is finance, the fourth, military.

The military committee is led by Mohamed Atef, the number three man in al Qaeda's hierarchy, and is itself divided into three departments, external military, internal military, and terrorist operations. The external military group has run al Qaeda operations in more conventional theaters of war outside Afghanistan, in Kashmir, Bosnia, and Chechnya, for example.

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: The principal recruits for his groups have been from the Middle East, principally Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Yemen.

BOETTCHER: The internal military section oversees al Qaeda's war effort inside Afghanistan.

The important committee in terms of running a terrorist attack, like the September 11 assaults in New York and Washington, intelligence sources say, is the terrorist operations committee. In this department, there is a surveillance group responsible for intelligence on intended targets, a supply cell, making sure there is enough equipment, money, and other logistical needs to carry out an operation, and finally, an execution group. It actually plans and carries out the operations.

BERGEN: The timber of person who comes to Afghanistan for training with al Qaeda is probably somebody in his early 20s who may be, shall we say, a little underemployed at home, or -- and certainly a committed Muslim. They come, they get religious training at these camps as well as military training, but they're indoctrinated into the most extreme reading of holy war.

BOETTCHER (on camera): Al Qaeda is highly compartmentalized. Information known by one committee isn't known by another. And its membership is hand-picked, especially in the military committee. You just don't join al Qaeda, you are asked to join.

Mike Boettcher, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Joining us now to try to help us get a better understanding of the bin Laden organization and specifically where it gets its money is William Wechsler. He joins us this morning from our New York bureau. He was director for transnational theaters on the U.S. National Security Council, and in that capacity headed a commission that looked into the source of bin Laden's money.

Sir, good morning. Thank you for joining us today.

WILLIAM WECHSLER, FORMER DIRECTOR, TRANSNATIONAL THREATS: Good morning.

KING: Help us understand. We see these pictures of Afghanistan, it looks quite desolate. Where does Mr. bin Laden get his money? Where does he keep it? And what can President Bush do now as he promises not only a military response but a financial response here?

WECHSLER: Right. The first thing we have to understand is that there's this misperception out there of bin Laden as someone who has inherited a lot of money and is simply writing his own checks to terrorist operations around the world. This is far too simplistic. And if this was a true story, then it would be easy to go after the money.

What he is, is someone who built up an intricate, complicated network of fund-raising, of money movements, money distributions. It was first built up to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, and this network is now -- has developed into the foundation for the terrorist financial network that supports al Qaeda.

KING: Now, you don't believe the United States government has done a good enough job of tracking this money and trying to cut it off, do you?

WECHSLER: That's true. The Clinton administration made a very good start at this. What they did is, President Clinton signed executive orders freezing assets at home, and more importantly, providing leverage that we could go to other places, other countries and say, You surely don't want your finances to be frozen or finances of entities in your country, so why don't you cooperate with the United States in helping us learn more about the terrorist financing network and letting us find the pressure points, the key persons, the key institutions, the key financial mechanisms, the key smuggling routes, the things that we can then take down, if possible, disrupt, if that's what we can do.

KING: Now, does Mr. bin Laden get money from any states? A lot of focus here on whether Saddam Hussein, or whether Iran or other state sponsors of terrorism might be involved. Any evidence of that?

WECHSLER: Well, that's an open question. I certainly wouldn't say that that is the primary way in which we suspect that he gets his money, but it is not -- we're not in the position to say that there is no connection to states as well.

KING: So help us look forward, then, Mr. Bush promising an unprecedented war in terrorism here, applying pressure to other governments, not only for military help and moral support, but to look into the banking systems you were just speaking about. Which two or three countries around the world are most critical here, and is there any evidence that they will cooperate now?

WECHSLER: Well, that is exactly the key question. We really need to do four things.

Law enforcement needs to continue the law enforcement tracing efforts to find out information that will help build cases.

But it can't stop there. We need to tactically work with countries and get far more support than we have been, key countries in the Middle East. We're talking about Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and South Asia, and then, of course, the key financial centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Kuwait. We need their help to track the money, to trace the network, and to find the key pressure points.

And then strategically we need to, over the long term, get these countries to develop far better domestic regulatory and supervision environments, because the sad fact is, is that right now, even if many of these countries had completely good political will to want to help the United States fully, they wouldn't even be able to fully understand what's going on in their country. They simply don't have the adequate legal regimes. And that needs to change.

And then the fourth thing that needs to be done is, we at the United States need to improve our own regulatory regime. We have a very good one, but we need to make sure that we have all the tools available to the executive branch and that we can trace money that gets into the United States, because remember, in order to have terrorist attacks in the United States, they have to eventually get the money into the U.S. financial system.

KING: All right, William Wechsler, very complicated story. Thank you so much for your time trying to help us understand it this morning. William Wechsler, former director of transnational threats at the National Security Council.

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