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CNN Saturday Morning News

Does U.S. Government Do All It Can to Protect American People?

Aired May 18, 2002 - 08:16   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: Many Americans are wondering if the government is doing all it can to protect them.

CNN security analyst Kelly McCann is in our Washington bureau. He joins us now to discuss the issue of homeland security and these warnings pre-9/11.

Kelly, good to see you again.

KELLY MCCANN, SECURITY ANALYST: Hi, Miles.

O'BRIEN: First of all, let's talk about these warnings. You've been in this business for a long time. It's very easy to look at these things with 20/20 hindsight and say ah, there it is, it's obvious. What really truly was missed? When you look at all these disparate pieces, if you put them together, it seems obvious now. Would it have ever been possible to put this all together if intelligence had been more, operating more cohesively?

MCCANN: Yes, but the problem more goes to the historical precedence of an event that size. If there's no historical precedence for something that big, for instance, you know, turning a plane into a missile, it's perceived as having less credibility and can seem outrageous. In fact, if we had even, you know, suggested that previous to 9/11, it would seem outrageous.

So, you know, the links that have to be made, Miles, to go from information to intelligence by corroborating different bits from different sources, hearing them from, you know, totally separate places, putting them together, then may not even cull out a single piece of quantitative information that you could find actionable.

And that's where it comes down to the bottom line. You have to find it actionable. You have to be able to draw assets based on what you justify and I don't think that that much information was there. I don't think that it was able to be justified.

Don't forget also that this was against a backdrop of all kinds of things going on worldwide. We had the things going on in Venezuela with Chavez. We had Colombia going on, of course, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo. I mean the daily threat matrix is, what, three inches deep?

So this was, yes, one other potential threat out of many, many from many people who do not like the United States.

O'BRIEN: All right, but that said, do you see some failures in the intelligence apparatus, in the way it talks or perhaps doesn't talk?

MCCANN: Absolutely. And I think that those intelligence professionals that have been in the game for a long time also know it. I mean you can track this, Miles, all the way back to the Church Committee, to the turn from Admiral Stansfield Turner to more technologically borne methods of collecting and away from human.

I mean over and over decades we've gotten further and further away from -- most recently in the last couple of years it was that people on the street, case officers, managers, people who are out there getting information were disallowed from engaging people with criminal backgrounds and ne'er-do-wells. Well, those are the people that are engaged in this.

O'BRIEN: You're not going to...

MCCANN: So...

O'BRIEN: You're not going to learn much if you start interviewing the choir, right?

MCCANN: Exactly. Exactly.

O'BRIEN: Well, anyway, let me ask you this, because that is an issue that's been discussed frequently, we need more human assets. When you say actionable, though, let's assume for a moment that, you know, there was some determination that Middle Eastern men might take some sort of action with airliners, maybe not even realizing they'd turn them into guided missiles. Prior to 9/11, it wasn't even politically correct to profile them.

What could have been done?

MCCANN: You're absolutely right. Preemption, and that is not politically correct. Preemption is a very aggressive thing and that could take many forms. It could take the form of arresting. It could take the form of interrupting. It could take the form of surveillance. It could take the form of many things. But we are exactly talking about preempting and you don't do preempting by going up to someone and saying hey, were you thinking about doing this particular thing?

There are other methods that you have to employ, some of which are viewed as, you know, unpalatable.

Take the story that just, was just run. The reporters said well, you know, although these people, it turned out, were not from the Middle East, so what? We know that there are people in the al Qaeda from, where, the Philippines, from South America. And any clever adversary will change their face.

So, in fact, if we're being reactionary and we're saying OK, we're going to profile just Middle Eastern men, we are wrong. From the beginning, CNN has reported that profiling means, what? Profiling patterns of behavior. Race is maybe a card, maybe not. But the behavior is. And I think that the person that actually saw them up there with the videotape recorder should be applauded because the grassroots community citizen was the one that alerted people to that and look what happened. I thought that was outstanding.

O'BRIEN: Well, let's talk about human psychology for a moment, though. Let's assume for a moment that there was a decision to go into aggressive preemption on this, and we don't have any evidence that that occurred. As it is right now, when you stand in these lines at the airport, people are on the razor thin edge of going bonkers anyway.

MCCANN: Sure.

O'BRIEN: They're tired of it. Even in light of what happened on September 11 they're fed up because Americans are just a bunch of whiners. Now, can you imagine if this, in a preemptive way, these measures were put in place without an event that would cause people to coalesce around them and at least rally somewhat? What would have happened?

MCCANN: Once again you have crystallized my thoughts, Miles, because, in fact, security will always be inconvenient and it will always be expensive. And in a country that will pay $20 million for a guy to run up and down a hardwood floor with a round rubber ball but pay a cop $25,000 a year, there is a loss of focus. And, in fact, right now, to have a huge investigation to determine whether these shreds of information could have, should have, would have, money better spent to look forward and say we know there's a problem now. We've got that information. We had an actual event. Let's turn to that and put this money against that.

I can't help but believe there's a little bit of political drama playing out by them doing that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) story.

O'BRIEN: Oh, I think a little politics might be involved here, Kelly? Really?

MCCANN: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: Imagine that. Imagine that. November is near.

All right, Kelly McCann, who puts it altogether for us in the realm of security and politics.

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