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CNN Saturday Morning News

Muhammad Exploited Cracks in Immigration System

Aired November 09, 2002 - 08:09   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.


RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities say it could be months before the sniper suspects go on trial. But yesterday John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo had their first court appearance in Virginia, the state which will prosecute them first. Malvo faced a judge in Fairfax County for the October killing of a woman outside a Home Depot in Falls Church. Prosecutors revealed Malvo's fingerprints were the only ones found on the rifle used in the sniper attacks.
Earlier in the day, Muhammad appeared at a hearing in nearby Prince William County -- Prince William George (sic) County, Virginia. Prosecutors will try him for an October 9 killing at a gas station in Manassas.

Investigators and prosecutors will put, have put together a timeline of the violence they say outlines the actions of the two sniper suspects. It stretches from Washington State across the country to the Washington, D.C. area.

On September 5, police in Clinton, Maryland report a man was wounded and his laptop computer stolen. On September 14, a man was shot and wounded in Silver Springs, Maryland. One week later, a man was shot and killed at a liquor store here in Atlanta, Georgia.

That same day a woman was killed and another was wounded at a liquor store one state away in Montgomery, Alabama. On September 23, a woman was killed in Birmingham, Alabama, Muhammad's hometown. And starting October 2, a wave of violence unfolded that left 10 people dead and three others wounded in and around the nation's capital.

Let's talk more about the latest developments in the sniper case.

CNN security analyst Kelly McCann joins me from Washington.

Kelly, thanks for sticking around for us this morning.

J. KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Sure, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: I'd like to get you to respond, first, to this "L.A. Times" story that appeared today, this where he is accused by Antiguan authorities of being a serial forger. He was able to bring John Lee Malvo with him from Antigua, calling him his first born son. This was a year and a half before the sniper spree started and it seems to me that maybe Muhammad was able to exploit some of the same faults and cracks in the immigrations and Customs system that the September 11 hijackers did.

What do you think? MCCANN: Sure. I mean part of the INS problem is, you know, to track so many disparate, disparate kind of documentation. This man had several different drivers licenses. He had several different birth certificates. He signed the departure cards in various names.

So, you know, whenever you have that kind of confusion, it's easy to create a situation that is arguable. Sometimes he argued his way out of it, sometimes he did not.

SAN MIGUEL: The idea, also, here, about the laptop computer. Now, obviously the prosecutors are looking at this as a key aid in the case. How valuable is that going to be and how easy is it to get information out of these laptops?

MCCANN: Oh, they're going to drill it down and I'm sure the tech support guys are right now going into the hard drive. They're going into the memory portions of the computer, the cached storage and all that, to try to pull out every bit of information that he may have entered. We may find that he had musings written in there. We may find that he had draft notes that he planned to send in there. He may have had correspondences that he expected to send to his wife in there.

So I think that it will probably bear some fruit.

SAN MIGUEL: The idea, also, that only Malvo's fingertips so far have been found on the .223 Bushmaster rifle, I mean the idea maybe that Muhammad had, was using him as a trigger man in a kind of a Svengali type of way was setting him up to the be the sniper in this case?

MCCANN: Well, there's a couple of different opinions on that. One is that Malvo, of course, is a juvenile, so, you know, if Malvo is a juvenile, how would it play for him if they were to be caught? Another is that maybe the younger person was unable to drive away from one of these scenes under cool, collected, kind of calm, you know, techniques. So the older person took that role and maybe the younger did the actual shooting.

But we won't know until they start talking a little bit more.

SAN MIGUEL: And the idea maybe that also maybe the younger person would have been the only one to be able to fit in the trunk of this, of the sniper car the way it was set up with the trunk, with the hole in the trunk and things like that.

MCCANN: Absolutely. I mean, you know, we really won't know until Muhammad starts to talk a little bit more. Right now he's just having his rights served him and he's being quiet. The "Post" reported that the son, Malvo, was being a little bit chatty. So chatty could lead to some good information.

SAN MIGUEL: We will see.

Let's focus now on what the "Washington Post" also reported yesterday about the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad saying that she was the target. She felt like that he had come to the Washington, D.C. area looking for her, knowing that she frequented Home Depots and Michael's Stores, which would explain the connection there. Do you think this is a valid reason here or not?

MCCANN: Again, you know, we won't know, Renay, until we really start getting inside his brain a little bit more. If you think about it, he did send a message. A lot of the murders occurred where he was known to have been -- Tacoma, Baton Rouge, up in Clinton, Maryland, where his wife was.

So, you know, what extraordinary measures, you know, for a person to send a message, to put somebody in fear at the cost of 10 to 12 or 11, now 13, 14, 15 people's lives. It's incredible.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes, just the idea that that would have been the motivation behind some of this. The idea of, also, the tying in of these other shootings, the one here in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, but Atlanta being the recent one here. The importance of ballistics now more than ever in this case. Can you talk about that?

MCCANN: Absolutely. Up until that point, it's just conjecture and there was certainly plenty of that during the hunt for him. The bottom line is is that nothing's worth saying until it's factually proven by physical evidence. So no police organization out there, no law enforcement agency is going to pony up and say we think that he's involved in X until they have good reason to believe that, and that's through physical evidence, because physical evidence doesn't lie.

SAN MIGUEL: What's going on right now in terms of getting that physical evidence now to more jurisdictions around the country who may be wondering, maybe these guys are responsible for some unsolved shootings in our area?

MCCANN: Part of the work is the establishment of their itinerary and their chronology of events. Once they do that, then more and more law enforcement organizations are going to look towards the small crimes or the capital offenses that may have funded their cross country movement. So until that itinerary is really set through interviews, interrogation, etc., I think once that's done you're going to see more law enforcement agencies say hey, we believe he might have been involved in X, let us send you this data.

SAN MIGUEL: All right, Kelly McCann, thanks for sticking around for us this morning.

CNN security analyst J. Kelly McCann.

Thanks a lot.

MCCANN: Thanks, Renay.

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







Aired November 9, 2002 - 08:09   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities say it could be months before the sniper suspects go on trial. But yesterday John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo had their first court appearance in Virginia, the state which will prosecute them first. Malvo faced a judge in Fairfax County for the October killing of a woman outside a Home Depot in Falls Church. Prosecutors revealed Malvo's fingerprints were the only ones found on the rifle used in the sniper attacks.
Earlier in the day, Muhammad appeared at a hearing in nearby Prince William County -- Prince William George (sic) County, Virginia. Prosecutors will try him for an October 9 killing at a gas station in Manassas.

Investigators and prosecutors will put, have put together a timeline of the violence they say outlines the actions of the two sniper suspects. It stretches from Washington State across the country to the Washington, D.C. area.

On September 5, police in Clinton, Maryland report a man was wounded and his laptop computer stolen. On September 14, a man was shot and wounded in Silver Springs, Maryland. One week later, a man was shot and killed at a liquor store here in Atlanta, Georgia.

That same day a woman was killed and another was wounded at a liquor store one state away in Montgomery, Alabama. On September 23, a woman was killed in Birmingham, Alabama, Muhammad's hometown. And starting October 2, a wave of violence unfolded that left 10 people dead and three others wounded in and around the nation's capital.

Let's talk more about the latest developments in the sniper case.

CNN security analyst Kelly McCann joins me from Washington.

Kelly, thanks for sticking around for us this morning.

J. KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Sure, Renay.

SAN MIGUEL: I'd like to get you to respond, first, to this "L.A. Times" story that appeared today, this where he is accused by Antiguan authorities of being a serial forger. He was able to bring John Lee Malvo with him from Antigua, calling him his first born son. This was a year and a half before the sniper spree started and it seems to me that maybe Muhammad was able to exploit some of the same faults and cracks in the immigrations and Customs system that the September 11 hijackers did.

What do you think? MCCANN: Sure. I mean part of the INS problem is, you know, to track so many disparate, disparate kind of documentation. This man had several different drivers licenses. He had several different birth certificates. He signed the departure cards in various names.

So, you know, whenever you have that kind of confusion, it's easy to create a situation that is arguable. Sometimes he argued his way out of it, sometimes he did not.

SAN MIGUEL: The idea, also, here, about the laptop computer. Now, obviously the prosecutors are looking at this as a key aid in the case. How valuable is that going to be and how easy is it to get information out of these laptops?

MCCANN: Oh, they're going to drill it down and I'm sure the tech support guys are right now going into the hard drive. They're going into the memory portions of the computer, the cached storage and all that, to try to pull out every bit of information that he may have entered. We may find that he had musings written in there. We may find that he had draft notes that he planned to send in there. He may have had correspondences that he expected to send to his wife in there.

So I think that it will probably bear some fruit.

SAN MIGUEL: The idea, also, that only Malvo's fingertips so far have been found on the .223 Bushmaster rifle, I mean the idea maybe that Muhammad had, was using him as a trigger man in a kind of a Svengali type of way was setting him up to the be the sniper in this case?

MCCANN: Well, there's a couple of different opinions on that. One is that Malvo, of course, is a juvenile, so, you know, if Malvo is a juvenile, how would it play for him if they were to be caught? Another is that maybe the younger person was unable to drive away from one of these scenes under cool, collected, kind of calm, you know, techniques. So the older person took that role and maybe the younger did the actual shooting.

But we won't know until they start talking a little bit more.

SAN MIGUEL: And the idea maybe that also maybe the younger person would have been the only one to be able to fit in the trunk of this, of the sniper car the way it was set up with the trunk, with the hole in the trunk and things like that.

MCCANN: Absolutely. I mean, you know, we really won't know until Muhammad starts to talk a little bit more. Right now he's just having his rights served him and he's being quiet. The "Post" reported that the son, Malvo, was being a little bit chatty. So chatty could lead to some good information.

SAN MIGUEL: We will see.

Let's focus now on what the "Washington Post" also reported yesterday about the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad saying that she was the target. She felt like that he had come to the Washington, D.C. area looking for her, knowing that she frequented Home Depots and Michael's Stores, which would explain the connection there. Do you think this is a valid reason here or not?

MCCANN: Again, you know, we won't know, Renay, until we really start getting inside his brain a little bit more. If you think about it, he did send a message. A lot of the murders occurred where he was known to have been -- Tacoma, Baton Rouge, up in Clinton, Maryland, where his wife was.

So, you know, what extraordinary measures, you know, for a person to send a message, to put somebody in fear at the cost of 10 to 12 or 11, now 13, 14, 15 people's lives. It's incredible.

SAN MIGUEL: Yes, just the idea that that would have been the motivation behind some of this. The idea of, also, the tying in of these other shootings, the one here in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, but Atlanta being the recent one here. The importance of ballistics now more than ever in this case. Can you talk about that?

MCCANN: Absolutely. Up until that point, it's just conjecture and there was certainly plenty of that during the hunt for him. The bottom line is is that nothing's worth saying until it's factually proven by physical evidence. So no police organization out there, no law enforcement agency is going to pony up and say we think that he's involved in X until they have good reason to believe that, and that's through physical evidence, because physical evidence doesn't lie.

SAN MIGUEL: What's going on right now in terms of getting that physical evidence now to more jurisdictions around the country who may be wondering, maybe these guys are responsible for some unsolved shootings in our area?

MCCANN: Part of the work is the establishment of their itinerary and their chronology of events. Once they do that, then more and more law enforcement organizations are going to look towards the small crimes or the capital offenses that may have funded their cross country movement. So until that itinerary is really set through interviews, interrogation, etc., I think once that's done you're going to see more law enforcement agencies say hey, we believe he might have been involved in X, let us send you this data.

SAN MIGUEL: All right, Kelly McCann, thanks for sticking around for us this morning.

CNN security analyst J. Kelly McCann.

Thanks a lot.

MCCANN: Thanks, Renay.

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