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CNN Live Sunday

Wesley Clark Discusses Bishop, War on Terror

Aired January 06, 2002 - 18:03   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now on this developing story in Tampa as well as the war on terror in Afghanistan is CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark. General, we're asking you to wear many hats today. Thanks for joining us.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good to be with you, Carol.

LIN: All right. You take a look at the situation in Tampa. The fact that a teenager was able to steal this plane and crash it into a building, what does that say about the general state of aviation security?

CLARK: We've been worried about general aviation security for some time. The aircraft need to be secured, the airfields need to be secured, and obviously we're going to also have to go through and do a better job of screening who could fly aircraft, who the private pilots are, who owns these aircraft. So it's going to be another major effort.

LIN: And the fact that you now know that F-15s were in fact dispatched from Homestead, but they couldn't make it to the scene on time, does that concern you?

CLARK: Well, it does in a way. But I think what's even more difficult in a case like this is, every -- this is a different case than the hijacking. So let's say the F-15s had gotten there. Could they have flown as slowly as the Cessna without stalling? If they could have gone in, if they could have looked in the cockpit, what would they have done? It would not have been a hijacking. He could have make it look like as though if he didn't know how to talk on the radio. Would they have actually shot the aircraft down? It would be a very difficult call.

After this, I think it would be a much simpler call, but I think that would have been a tough call.

LIN: Well, are there questions about response capability then when you look at the fact that he flew for a full minute over MacDill Air Force Base airspace as well, and MacDill didn't have the capacity to respond either?

CLARK: I think -- I think what we're going to see is a more widespread capability. Probably a few more assets dispersed out there so that the reaction time could be reduced. I think that clearly is the lesson here.

LIN: Yeah, lots of question, and of course we're very early into the investigation.

Let me move you onto Afghanistan. Today, Hamid Karzai said that he is giving authority to anti-Taliban fighters to negotiate with the Taliban fighters who are apparently protecting Mullah Omar. Is this a good strategy? I mean, why not go ahead and send U.S. forces in and grab Mullah Omar, as well as his supporters?

CLARK: Well, I think it's a good strategy. As General Franks said on Friday, he's going to keep up this strategy of using the local forces first. I think that's the right strategy. And there's been a lot of martyrdom and death in this country over 20 years. People don't want to die, and as long as one side clearly has force superior force -- and Hamid Karzai does have that superior force with the United States behind him -- there is no doubt in the mind of any of these former Taliban supporters what the outcome of a fight is going to be. So it's just the matter of talking them into surrender.

I think it's the right strategy. Mullah Omar is going to run out of options. We're going to run him right into the arms of Hamid Karzai.

LIN: Well, apparently he's running around on a motorcycle. Did you hear about this report of witnesses seeing him fleeing on a motor bike?

CLARK: And, you know, one man on a motor bike, even if he has got a couple of accomplices, is far from being a credible threat to the United States, so we have got him where we want him, we're going to keep pursuing him, and I'm increasingly confident that he will come into our control.

LIN: What do you make of these eight detainees on the USS Bataan? It's a very exclusive group, and it includes the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan as well as John Walker. Why isolate this very small and particular group on this U.S. battleship?

CLARK: Well, I think it's a chance to be able to talk with them under much more convenient circumstances, and at the same time have them isolated from each other so that they can't reinforce each others' resistance.

And I think that out there on a symbol of American power, when they recognize what they're up against and the weight of the civilized world, some of these crazy radical dreams that propelled this Taliban movement are going to look -- they're going to like just like they were, crazy and dreams. And I think this is the right approach to sort of break down their resistance and bring them over to our side, and get them talking.

LIN: Do you think that's the strategy of moving some what might be up to 2,000 of these al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to Guantanamo in Cuba? Just seemed like an odd location, and even the defense secretary said it's not ideal? CLARK: Well, it's probably a logistically-driven consideration, because when you have that many people to house so many in Afghanistan and bring in the U.S. troops that would be needed to take care of them, you would be building a big U.S. base.

Now, we've had a lot of experience using Guantanamo in the past, because many of the refugees from the Haitian crisis in 1994, for example, came to Guantanamo, and they were screened there and dealt with, and there were some people who were kept in maximum security conditions down there. So, we have existing plans, we have troops on stand-by that can do that kind of thing on relatively short notice, and so we know what we're doing there. It makes sense logistically.

LIN: And I'm wondering how long they can even keep up this operation. I mean, what happens to these al Qaeda prisoners? Are they in fact prisoners? Do they have legal rights? Would they qualify, for example, for asylum, if they were to give over the right bit of information?

CLARK: Well, their legal status is somewhat ambiguous, because the United States didn't exactly declare war, and they're not members of a state with which the United States is at war. So they are in an ambiguous condition.

But under the Geneva Conditions, of course, because we were using armed force, we were in an armed conflict. They'll be given the rights to surrender and so forth. But what happens to them after that is very much up to the United States and the nations from which they came. So I would expect that we'll be talking to the Kuwaiti government, the Yemen government, the Saudi government and all the rest of these governments about what they'd like to do, and this may be -- the fact that these people may not be exactly welcomed at home may be additional leverage the United States uses to persuade them to talk to us.

LIN: Yeah, but then you're also suggesting that they might even qualify under the right conditions for, say, refugee status in a third country and possibly even some sort of asylum status right here in the United States.

CLARK: I think if they begin to talk and they want to turn sides, that there are arrangements that can be made with the United States. But given the fact that they were using armed force and so forth, they're not going to qualify as refugees here in this country.

LIN: All right. Thank you very much, General Wesley Clark. It will be interesting to see what information, if any, they get from these people. Good to see you.

CLARK: Nice to see you too.

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