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CNN Saturday Morning News

Pentagon, Taliban Deny Reports of U.S. Special Forces Capture

Aired September 29, 2001 - 08:34   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: We also know, among the latest developments, operations involving U.S. and British special forces in the region and senior administration officials telling us also in Afghanistan over the past several days.

For more on the latest developments in the military deployment, we turn now to our Mark Potter over at the Pentagon -- Mark.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hello, John.

We have a little flurry of activity at the Pentagon this morning. There was a report from the Al-Jazeera network in Qatar that some American special forces members, three of them, along with two Afghans with U.S. citizenship, were captured by either Taliban or al Qaeda fighters. The report indicated that they were on a reconnaissance mission, that they were carrying weapons and that they were carrying maps of al Qaeda locations.

However, a couple of hours after that report surfaced, the Pentagon said that there was no credence to that report, no reason to believe it's true and there was also a denial of that report from the Taliban.

Now, the Pentagon says in this war of words, this balancing act that we have been going through here, that they are not giving this a categoric denial, but that is because they say that they do not want to get in the position where every time something is said in the region that they have to either confirm or deny it.

But they are indicating very strongly that there is no reason for them to believe that this is true and they are saying that there is no credence to this report.

Now, it did create some interest because, as you said at the outset, there has been reporting confirmed by U.S. officials that American and British special forces units have been going in and out of Afghanistan doing surveillance missions. So it did catch some attention this morning and it appeared on some Web sites. But from the indications we are getting now it is most likely untrue. And again, the Pentagon saying no credence to it.

Something else I'd like to tell you, our military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre reports that the Pentagon is considering a humanitarian mission to Afghanistan, perhaps dropping food and medicine in the region to help win over the Afghan people.

And other than that, it's fairly quiet here at the Pentagon today. No briefings are scheduled. The media office was closed overnight and the halls are relatively empty, at least the halls that we have access to -- John, back to you.

KING: Well, Mark, U.S. officials obviously very secretive about any deployment, any operations involving special forces. But one official I spoke to yesterday said while we're very secretive about this, it is relatively routine in the sense that if you're going to send the military in any large scale operation into Afghanistan, you'd want to send in advance operations to scout it out. Is that what our indications are as to what's happening?

POTTER: Absolutely. Analysts have said that they would be very surprised if the U.S. wasn't doing this now. This is a routine thing, sending these small units in to scout the terrain, to look for areas where other troops could come in later looking for potential landing sites, all kinds of things like this. It was done before the Gulf War and apparently it's being done now and it is not at all considered unusual. It is a matter of course, and as I said, military analysts say if we weren't doing it, if the United States was not doing it, they would be very surprised.

KING: All right, Mark Potter tracking developments for us this morning at the Pentagon, thank you. We'll check in a little bit later. And now let's go back to Bill Hemmer in New York.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John.

Many questions up here in New York, including what should the U.S. be careful of as they enter this new war? Who are the allies and who is the enemy?

Kimberly Marten Zisk, an associate professor of political science at Barnard College here in New York, also a fellow at the Council On Foreign Relations. Good morning to you. Thanks for getting up on a Saturday.

KIMBERLY MARTEN ZISK, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good morning. Thank you for having me here.

HEMMER: You write two things, professor. The U.S. faces two terrible dangers. One, reacting too rashly, and two, being paralyzed by introspection. The rash reaction would come where do you see?

ZISK: I think that there is a danger of reacting too strongly and of possibly losing this very fragile coalition we have, especially of Arab states, the support that we have of Russia. All of these countries are facing domestic opposition and that means we have to be very careful to make sure that we keep these leaders on board and take very careful, very limited action.

HEMMER: So is this a question of political moves, diplomatic moves or is it a question of time are you suggesting? ZISK: It's a combination of all of those things and I think the greatest danger would be to take too strong a military attack without balancing it with very careful diplomacy, without balancing it with other tools such as economic assistance.

HEMMER: We're 18 days after the 11th of September. One may think that it is being very deliberative in terms of a military response. Would you agree with that?

ZISK: Yes. So far it seems to be moving ahead very, very carefully. I think the Bush administration is taking the correct tack moving as slowly as it is. And we can just hope that as things continue, that that sort of deliberation will continue and also...

HEMMER: Well -- go ahead, please.

ZISK: Oh, it seems that we're doing a good job of figuring out what these other state leaders need in terms of sort of things that we can give them to make sure that they stay on board. For example, we're doing some military intelligence sharing with Russia which is very important for Russia because of its obligations in central Asia, especially with Tajikistan.

There's concern about the refugee crisis and the role that the Russian military might be asked to play in that. A Russian military satellite is currently not in operation over that area of the world that had been there earlier. And so that means that their military intelligence is not at the level that is used to be. And one way that we can keep Russia on board is by making sure that Russian interests in having that information are kept.

HEMMER: It is a delicate chess game, that's for certain. You also comment not only about Russia, but also Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Are they as critical as Russia at this point or are they even more so?

ZISK: They're probably even more critical and the problem there is that the leaders are really walking a tightrope. On the one hand, they would like to support us. They don't want to be included in a list of enemies. On the other hand, they face significant domestic opposition, particularly coming from fundamentalists who many be militant, who may be anti-American and who may be tempted to support the Taliban, to support Osama bin Laden.

And the biggest fear that we face, I think, is that those leaders, if push came to shove and if they were forced to make a choice, would be much more concerned about their domestic stability than about holding their relationship with us together.

There's no question whatever we do, whatever action we take that tightrope that the leaders are walking on is going to wobble. But we just have to be very careful to help them keep their balance.

HEMMER: Back to the original point here, reacting too rashly. You talked about that. Being paralyzed by introspection, what do you mean by that? ZISK: I think that there is a tendency to bring in questions of what it means to be a democracy and what that has to do with our actions and those are very important questions to raise. But, for example, one of the questions that we're facing is how much information we should be sharing with the rest of the world to get their support. How much information needs to be released domestically in order to make sure that it's truly a democratic process that's going into the foreign policy making?

The problem there is that if too much information is released, it can compromise the human sources that the information is coming from. It can lead to the deaths of people that are supplying the information and can actually hurt the cooperation.

So those are the kinds of questions that we're wrestling with. In academia, that's certainly an appropriate place to be approaching those questions, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we really do need to take action to demonstrate resolve. We don't want to be in a situation where it looks as though we lack political will to take a strong response to this attack that's happened.

HEMMER: Interesting stuff. Come on back, OK?

Kimberly Martens is a professor here at Barnard College in New York City.

ZISK: Thank you very much.

HEMMER: Very good to talk with you.

ZISK: Thanks. Good to talk with you.

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