Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

Legal Roundtable: What to Expect at John Walker's Hearing

Aired March 30, 2002 - 07:21   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get to our legal roundtable without much further ado. Three big cases on our minds this morning. Joining us to sort it all out, in Washington is former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne, who is a legal analyst...

CYNTHIA ALKSNE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: ... for us here at CNN. Good to see you.

And in Miami, Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney. A pair of former prosecutors here.

KENDALL COFFEY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: So that means they'll agree on everything, right?

ALKSNE: We'll see.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's do a preview, first of all. Cynthia, John Walker Lindh has a hearing on Monday. We're going to get a little sense of his case, I guess, and where they're headed with it. What should we be looking for in that hearing?

ALKSNE: Well, there's going to be -- one thing it's important to know about the hearing is what's not going to happen. What's not going to happen is, the judge is not going to make a decision on whether or not his statements are admissible against -- you know, his own statements are admissible against him. That's what everybody's really waiting for in this case.

But there are going to be skirmishes about that, whether or not the FBI changed or altered the way his statements were written down, and whether or not there were e-mails back and forth about what to say about his statements. So there'll be all kinds of things around the edges, but not a decision on the core issue.

O'BRIEN: Kendall, let me ask you this. If Mr. Lindh insists on calling witnesses, that could be very problematic in the real world, couldn't it?

COFFEY: Well, and the witnesses he calls may be located anywhere from Guantanamo to the caves of Tora Bora. One of the things the defense is trying to do is throw out the broadest possible net of people who somewhere, somehow might be necessary to the defense. That gets a lot of burden, potentially, on the government, although the judge can control that and keep this fairly focused.

That's what they've got to do, because we can't have the government spending the next six months hunting down everyone who might have come within 20 miles of John Walker Lindh.

O'BRIEN: Well, I'm curious, you know, how much of an onus is on the government to do just that. At what point does it become an unreasonable search for witnesses? How do you define that moment when it's unreasonable?

COFFEY: Well, what the government has done in their answering papers is pretty reasonable. They've indicated, with respect to Guantanamo, there's some things they're simply not prepared to comment on, that they're looking into it.

With respect to information about -- that could go to the circumstances of the confession, they provided, apparently, a great deal of information. Obviously they're keeping the identities of the military personnel undisclosed, at least for present.

But where it's going to get more difficult is in some of the broader requests. For example, John Walker Lindh has got "The Taliban made me do it" defense as well as his attacks on the confession.

And at some point there may be members of the Taliban who are held in custody somewhere, perhaps individuals that John Walker Lindh can identify, perhaps people who could, in some fashion, support a defense.

So down the road, the judge is going to deal with these things in a way that's balanced and protects national security interests.

O'BRIEN: All right. Cynthia, anything to add on that point?

ALKSNE: No, I think it'll be interesting, but for lawyers, but not nearly as interesting for non-lawyers.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's move on to the Danny Pearl case. For those of us who have complained abut the slow movement of justice in this country, we can turn to Pakistan, where there's about to be a trial already in the case of the murder of Danny Pearl. That is pretty astounding for those of us -- it makes one wonder about the system there.

Cynthia, this is -- I'm going to take a wild guess that Pakistan, with its British lineage, does have a British law at its core in how it was formed. Is it a good legal system? Is it a fair legal system? And will there be justice there?

ALKSNE: Well, I don't -- I can't tell you, I'm not an expert on Pakistani law. I can tell you that the trial will go forward on the 5th. Four of the 11 people who have been charged have been arrested, and they will go ahead and go to trial. We'll get a preview of what might happen in our trial later. We're starting to learn some facts, actually, about the murder of Danny Pearl. There is a taxi driver that they have as a witness who took him to meet with Sheikh Omar Sayeed, and he will testify that he took him there to a restaurant. They shook hands, and then Sayeed and Danny Pearl went off in a separate car together.

There are two of the men who have been charged also confessed and implicated Sheikh Omar Sayeed. Now they've recanted those confessions, so you can imagine what that will be like in the courtroom. But so that evidence will come forward.

And then FBI agents will be in to testify about the tracing of the e-mails.

So it will be a good preview for us of our eventual trial in the United States, if he is ever extradited.

O'BRIEN: Well, let's talk about venue, Kendall. Is Pakistan the place to get the thing rolling here, or should this just be sent right over to the U.S. court system?

COFFEY: I'm very concerned that the Pakistanis seem to think they have to proceed with the case. It seems to me that the very guy who's on trial right now, Omar Sayeed Sheikh, got out of an Indian jail because an Indian airliner was hijacked, perhaps by Amjad Peruki (ph), maybe the killer of Daniel Pearl, who is still at large.

So if he grabs a school bus of Pakistani school children, what kind of situation does that put anyone in as long as the killers of Daniel Pearl are being processed by Pakistani authorities?

He really needs to be brought back to this country. I think that's a better scenario for Pakistan, and certainly for justice.

The other concern I have is, once the Pakistani justice system has spoken, how then does the Pakistani government justify sending him back to the U.S. for some different outcome? If he's acquitted in Pakistan, I think they would have a huge difficulty sending him over there for, in effect, a retrial. If he's sentenced to life, that creates problems, obviously, if there's a death sentence, that's a different scenario.

But remember, Pakistan, like the U.S., has a very well-developed appellate system, and that can mean years in the appellate courts of Pakistan.

O'BRIEN: Is it correct, Kendall, to view this as a bit of a litmus test on how serious Pakistan is in its allegiance and alliance with the U.S., fighting the war against terrorism?

COFFEY: It is, and it's also a test for the rest of the world. One of the things Attorney General Ashcroft has said is, in terms of dealing with terrorists -- and we have thousands of people who, in some fashion, have to be processed and brought to justice somewhere -- it is our first hope that other countries can address these terrorists in a very meaningful way. We may be about to find out whether that's a reality with the handling of Daniel Pearl's killers in Pakistan.

O'BRIEN: Cynthia, on this subject, turning now to Zacarias Moussaoui, the case against him -- and this is the prisoner who was picked up week or so before September 11, had all the earmarks of being the -- probably on board that United Airlines flight which crashed in Pennsylvania. But we don't know, it's a very circumstantial case.

How weak or strong is this case, from your reading of it?

ALKSNE: Well, it gets stronger the more you learn about it, you know. First let me say, I think that the jury can be fair for him. Most people only know that he is the 20th hijacker, and that's all they know. It's my experience that jurors will hold the government to finding out more information than that.

But as you dig into it, it's pretty interesting. This is a guy who has all kinds of connections that are related to Mohammed Atta, that was trained in terrorist camps, that came to the United States and was in the same -- went to Norman, Oklahoma, for a flight training school, where Atta also visited.

Then he went to Egan, where -- to Egan -- to a flight training school in Minnesota, where he got money from somebody in one of Atta's cells. He got -- he brought flight training videos, the same exact ones from the exact same Sporty's Pilot Shop that Mohammed Atta got training videos.

So as you look at all the circumstantial evidence, it does build and build and build against him.

O'BRIEN: Kendall, do you agree? A case like that, while being circumstantial, can still be very persuasive, can it not?

COFFEY: It's a compelling circumstantial case, and as we know, all kinds of convictions, including murder and conspiracy convictions, are based on circumstantial evidence.

But here's what the defense focus is going to be, is developing all the other possibilities for other people that could have been that 20th hijacker. There are thousands of people in the U.S., foreign students, who take flight training.

And one of the things we'll see, as we're seeing with Walker Lindh, is an exhaustive defense effort to get information from the government, including classified information about all the other people who might have been that 20th terrorist, either in this country, trying to get into this country, their connections, their connections to Atta.

So I think it's a very good circumstantial case, but I think the defense is going to be very aggressive in trying to suggest that circumstantially there are others who might have been that 20th hijacker as well. O'BRIEN: All right. We're going to have to have a little recess on our discussion. Thank you very much, both of you, Kendall Coffey, Cynthia Alksne, for helping us sort out legal matters this CNN SATURDAY MORNING. We'll see you sometime soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com