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CNN Saturday Morning News

What Is Next for U.S. Intelligence Community?

Aired June 08, 2002 - 08:06   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: Well, the president pitched his plan for a Department of Homeland Security on the very same day that an FBI whistle-blower appeared on Capitol Hill to speak out against the FBI. Coleen Rowley, a Minneapolis field agent, accuses the FBI of mishandling the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker.

With the U.S. intelligence agencies under fire and the president's new proposal, what's next?

Some insight now as we turn to CNN security analyst Kelly McCann.

Kelly, good morning.

KELLY MCCANN, SECURITY ANALYST: Hi, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, so what are your thoughts on this new office?

MCCANN: Well, it's going to be a little bit like trying to turn a battleship at sea. It's not going to happen quickly. And probably the viewers should look up a little bit about the cabinet and see just what an immense job this is going to be. I think it's needed, but I also think that Tom Ridge is a very intelligent guy. He's a Harvard grad, combat veteran and congressman for many terms. He understands what needs to get done and he also understands there will be some turf battles. It's inevitable. I mean there are turf battles that happen right now.

So I think it's a step forward. Naysayers, well, you can naysay about virtually anything. We need to do something. We need to empower Tom Ridge and I think this is a great step.

PHILLIPS: There's going to be senior -- how do you know who's going to be the senior agency? I mean we've already seen these problems at the CIA and the FBI. How do you get all these agencies together and decide who is going to be in charge and who reports to whom?

MCCANN: Well, that, the devil is in the details. You know, just trying to construct the wire diagram for this thing would probably take months. If you look at a review of just what Attorney General Ashcroft is responsible for, the many, many, many offices that are underneath him, and then in a sub kind of cabinet you've got the CIA, you've got NSC, it's going to be very difficult. But that structure is necessary to construct so that it supports the real operator in the field who can surface this information and then has to rely on the staff, that it would be staffer properly, correlated against other information, etc.

PHILLIPS: You know, as you can imagine, I'm getting a -- I know you're coming back for our reporter's notebook at 9:00 on homeland security. But I'm getting a number of e-mails and I just want to throw some of these thoughts out at you, because I'm getting a lot related to this question, and that is, "The new security setup into the mix. Is it being thrown in there to take the heat off of the hearings, or am I being too cynical?" That's Jerry Brooks (ph) in Sioux City. It's a good question.

MCCANN: It's a good question, Jerry. But, you know, the thing is is think about the immensity of what we're talking about here. I think that that's pretty presumptuous to think that something this huge -- I mean this is historic, Kyra. The last department that was constructed was the veteran, the Veteran Affairs. Before that it was education in '80 and then again in '80 some odd.

So this is an historic event. I don't think that we'd take that kind of step to take the heat off.

PHILLIPS: Do you think there will come a point, I had a couple of conversations with different friends of mine in different branches of the military and everybody had a very interesting insight. But I want to know what you think about this. Will the day come where we will see armed soldiers walking on our streets, walking through the streets of New York, walking through Atlanta, just patrolling like police would walk a beat?

MCCANN: There is a guttural response to that in the U.S., which is that's all the way back to the time when we fought the British for our independence. People would really abhor that. Now, might it be borne out of necessity? Yes. But if you look at the model of terrorism, for instance, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, the terrorist tries to create a set of circumstances that can only be answered by the militarization of a government. And then, once the government takes those extreme steps to keep their population safe, the population starts to resent those very things they needed to enact.

So it's a very complex problem, one that's not easily answerable.

PHILLIPS: Now, the Justice Department announced these guidelines requiring Arab visa holders to register with the government and be fingerprinted. What do you think about this and what type of impact do you think this will make on this war on terror, against terror?

MCCANN: I think it's a little bit misunderstood, Kyra, because the fact that you take fingerprints, of course, is not just the only answer. It's the non-reporting. For instance, if you have a total outline of where this fellow says he's going to be, what he's going to do, what he looks like, where he says he's living and he doesn't check in and then you go to look for him and you can't find him, that obviously puts him on the skyline. That's really what this measure is about.

It's not about Big Brother or about accounting any other way. It's about almost an exclusion. You would note by exception someone is missing.

PHILLIPS: Kelly McCann, CNN security analyst, we'll see you back here at 9:00, OK?

MCCANN: You bet, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Thanks, Kelly.

He's going to be a part of our reporter's notebook on homeland security in the next hour, along with CNN White House correspondent Kelly Wallace. They'll take your e-mail questions and comments on the terror hearings and homeland security then we'll get some insight from Capitol Hill. Senator Richard Shelby will join us for a live interview on "Saturday Edition" at 10:00 a.m.

You can e-mail me your questions now, too, on homeland security. That's wam@cnn.com.

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