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CNN Saturday Morning News

U.S. Concludes Operation Mountain Lion

Aired April 06, 2002 - 07:27   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In Afghanistan, U.S. troops have returned to Bagram Air Base from a new operation against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

On the phone now, live from Afghanistan, is CNN's Ryan Chilcote. He was the only television journalist to accompany on that mission.

Ryan, what can you tell us?

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Kyra, Operation Mountain Lion lasted for six days. It involved approximately 500 soldiers from the U.S.'s 101st Airborne Division. That mission came to a close today when the last troops in the Zhawar Kili region of eastern Afghanistan, that's just next to Pakistan, returned to the Bagram Air Base just outside of Kabul.

The Airborne actually began airlifting those troops out on Thursday but had to wait a couple of days because of bad weather to pick up the rest.

The goal of that mission was to search and destroy caves that have been occupied, formerly occupied, by al Qaeda and Taliban forces. And we were, as you mentioned, had some exclusive access on that trip, and I actually filmed those troops searching those caves -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Yes, amazing access, Ryan. Tell me what the soldiers found while going through the caves.

CHILCOTE: Well, they found a mixture of things, and quite frankly, they don't really know what they found themselves, because there weren't any Arabic speakers -- or Arabic readers, I should say, on hand. They certainly found prayer books, and then they found a lot of curious material, some manuals that said things like "Anti- aircraft," misspelled, I would note, and then it would be translated into Arabic. It looked as if it was some kind of military manual that had been translated into Arabic.

They also found (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a "USA Today" from May 17 of 2001. So they found lots of interesting things, and a lot of it had to do with military affairs.

But it's up to the experts to say exactly what they collected.

PHILLIPS: Ryan, obviously they have to translate these documents and sift through the things that they found, but any leads to Osama bin Laden, anything at all?

CHILCOTE: No leads. They were hoping -- the soldiers that I (UNINTELLIGIBLE) was with from the 101st were actually hoping to make contact with at least some small pocket of al Qaeda and Taliban forces, and that did not happen. U.S. -- the troops there, some of them say they are acting on some intelligence reports, they don't know whether they're correct or not, that the al Qaeda and Taliban forces that were in that region may have slipped over the border into Pakistan.

So what they were actually doing is looking at these caves in eastern Afghanistan to see if, you know, the Taliban and al Qaeda forces had left any munitions behind so that they -- if they do indeed slip back from Pakistan, where they may be, into Afghanistan, they could pick up those munitions and then fight again.

PHILLIPS: Ryan Chilcote, incredible access, Operation Mountain Lion, thank you so much.

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