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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

War Room: Terrorists Said to Be Targeting Four Suspension Bridges

Aired November 01, 2001 - 19:00   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.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight on WOLF BLITZER REPORTS, the "War Room." With carpet bombing from the air, and the prospect of more U.S. troops on the ground...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We have a number of teams cocked and ready to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Military planners say the war against terrorism is just getting started.

We'll go live to the Pentagon, and we'll look at the role of human intelligence in the hunt for a still-defiant Osama bin Laden. A new warning tonight that one of the nation's most visible landmarks may be a terrorist target.

I'll speak live with former CIA director James Woolsey, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Shelby, and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, as we go into the "War Room."

Welcome to our viewers in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting tonight from Washington. Right now, the House of Representatives is getting ready to vote on two aviation security bills. Results are expected during this program. We will bring them to you when they are in.

We begin with breaking news. California Governor Gray Davis is warning of a credible threat to destroy bridges in that state. Security is being increased at the Golden Gate Bridge and other bridges throughout California. Governor Davis announced the threat after receiving a warning from the FBI. That agency says the threat is not as credible as the one which prompted Monday's warning from the Attorney General John Ashcroft about a broader terrorist threat facing U.S. interests in the United States as well as around the world.

Still, it did prompt the FBI to issue this statement only moments ago: "The FBI is in position of uncorroborated information indicating the possibility if additional terrorist attacks against the United States, specifically the West Coast. Reportedly, unspecified groups are targeting suspension bridges on the West Coast. Six incidents are to take place during rush hour, beginning Friday, November 2 and continuing through November 7, 2001. No further information about this alleged attack is known at this time. The FBI is attempting to verify the validity of this report."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRAY DAVIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Now, it may not happen. We hope it doesn't happen. We are trying to communicate, we are ready. It makes no sense for them to try this, but it's our obligation at the same time to inform the public that we are aware of this threat, and they need to be aware of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We will get to our discussion of the war in Afghanistan shortly, but first let's bring in former CIA director James Woolsey.

You have been the recipient, when you were the director the CIA, other times in your government career, of these kinds of vague, but supposedly credible threats. Give us some perspective on what this might mean.

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: This one is considerably more specific. Indeed exact dates, the second through the 7th, rush hour, suspension bridges, than a lot of the other ones have been. And as a result I think, even though it's uncorroborated, you would expect the authorities to take some kind of action.

It's a little surprising to me that they announced the details because it's possible to alert your people to guard and the like, without having a public announcement of dates and the rush hour and the like. That might betray a source of method and forgive me, all of us who have ever had my job, or jobs in intelligence often think, how can we take action and protect people, but still not give away a source or method?

But this is, even if uncorroborated, quite specific, remarkably so.

BLITZER: And the fear, of course, and I am sure Governor Davis, when weighing this public decision to go out there and make the announcement to say he has alerted the National Guard, the commander out there tighten security at the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Coronado Bridge in San Diego. He has to weigh the fear of panicking the people out there, while at the same time alerting them to a legitimate fear.

WOOLSEY: He does, and also it strikes me, although I am now certain, that California may not be the only West Coast state that has suspension bridges. It is interesting, if it's the case that there weren't other governors that spoke as well. I wonder if the federal governments were entirely and fully coordinated on this. It would be interesting to see in the aftermath just exactly who decided to announce what, when and with what specificity. BLITZER: And as usual, there may be some disconnect between the FBI and the governor. We will have to follow up on that, but stand by, Mr. Woolsey. I want to move on and broaden this discussion now to the military campaign. The Pentagon says it is stepping up bombing runs designed in part to aid Northern Alliance forces in their fight against Taliban troops. CNN military affairs correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, joins us now live from the Pentagon. Jamie, what is the latest?

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In an answer to critics that the U.S. in Afghanistan is bogging down, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began the Pentagon briefing today with a short speech in which he stressed, "We are in early stages of this conflict." He invoked the image of the World Trade Center saying that the ruins are still smoking. And he announced that more U.S. ground troops are going into Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The Pentagon says its three-week delay in bombing Taliban forces was, in part, due to shortage of Army Green Berets and Air Force Special Forces on the ground.

RUMSFELD: The reason we did it in that sequence is because we did not have people on the ground who could help with the targeting. And we do now, have some -- nowhere near as many as we need.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon wants to quadruple the small number if special forces teams in Afghanistan who have been using portable lasers to identify ground targets to U.S. pilots, who then use the reflected laser energy to guide their bombs with devastating accuracy.

Several teams are "cocked and ready to go in," says Rumsfeld, but have been have thwarted by bad weather and at least one case, small arms fire.

RUMSFELD: Ground fire was simply too heavy to unload the folks, so they went back and they will try again at a different landing area.

MCINTYRE: NATO ally Turkey is sending about 90 troops to help train the Northern Alliance forces. While the Pentagon says it will step up its aid to other opposition groups in central and western Afghanistan.

But again, Pentagon officials say they must go slow to ensure air drops of food and ammunition don't end up being sold by profiteers.

RUMSFELD: You just don't load up an airplane and start dropping it out from the sky in parachutes for people that you have not developed some sort of a relationship with.

MCINTYRE: Roughly 80 percent of U.S. bombing is now pounding front line Taliban troops to pave the way for an expected Northern Alliance advance on Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif. But some bombs are still hitting the caves where al Qaeda forces are thought to be hunkered down, such as this one where a secondary explosion indicates that ammunition or fuel was inside.

And the Pentagon's top leaders both deny the U.S. military campaign has been constrained because of the U.S. inability to forge a coalition government to replace the Taliban.

RUMSFELD: I have seen a lot of press reporting to that effect, a great deal. It is absolutely false.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says its strategy was to cut off supply lines and communications before attacking front-line Taliban forces so that those troops would have no way to resupply and nowhere to go -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Jamie, the Pentagon is shying away from calling this latest series of bombings "carpet bombings." Why are they refusing to call it that?

MCINTYRE: They don't like the term "carpet bombing" because they think it brings to mind the indiscriminate kind of bombing that was done by the B-52s in the Vietnam War when large areas of ground or jungle were attacked with no knowledge of exactly what was there.

They say the methods of delivering multiple numbers of unguided bombs to a particular area is now much more precise and that they are using these bombs on troop concentrations where they don't have to worry so much about civilian casualties, and they say it is not an indiscriminate type of bombing, that's why they don't like the term "carpet bombing." But in effect, generically speaking, it is carpet bombing.

BLITZER: Jamie McIntyre, from the Pentagon. Thank you very much.

And with the war in Afghanistan entering a new phase, was the Pentagon right to start off with a deliberate approach? What's the next step? My guests now, once again, we return James Woolsey, he is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser during the Carter Administration; and the Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama.

Remember, you can e-mail questions to our guests. Just go to cnn.com/wolf. Let me begin with you, Senator Shelby, this whole notion of carpet bombing that we just ended the discussion with Jamie McIntyre, is this an effective way to go forward with this kind of campaign to try to help, presumably, the Northern Alliance in the northern part of country?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), VICE CHAIRMAN, SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I thought we weren't using the term "carpet bombing." Someone else was. I'm speaking of our troops and our secretary of defense. I think what we have to do is leave it up to the secretary of defense and our military strategists to decide what we need to do, because they are doing this in a measured way. They realize this is a tough, tough country to deal in. And I believe we have to be patient, Wolf. You know, all of us are impatient by nature. We are Americans. This is not going to happen overnight, but I believe it is going to happen if we keep the resolve, and if we back the president. I believe our military has got a good plan.

BLITZER: Has this been a good plan so far, Dr. Brzezinski, especially the comparisons which, only three and a half weeks since the start of the air war, already being made to Vietnam and carpet bombing, very unsuccessful 20 years ago, 30 years ago?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I think it is too early for these judgments. This campaign has to unfold for a while and then we will see how successful it is. But it is probably not too early to at least keep sharply in mind the distinction between fighting al Qaeda, and getting bogged down in an Afghan war. And I think we have to keep that distinction in mind.

Al Qaeda is entrenched in Afghanistan. To that extent, we have to take on the Taliban. But I think we have be very careful not to let the campaign against al Qaeda become the war against the Taliban, which becomes a war against Afghans, because we can get bogged down in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: Do you...

BRZEZINSKI: Let me just finish one thought. Our Agenda is much bigger than that. Al Qaeda is not entrenched just in Afghanistan. It's present in the Middle East, it is also present in Western Europe and here. And we have to turn our eyes to some other targets if we don't get bogged down in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: If I hear you correctly, I will let Mr. Woolsey pick this up, differentiation between al Qaeda, the Taliban, is that a fair differentiation?

WOOLSEY: Not absolutely all Taliban, I suppose, are full bore supporters of al Qaeda. I must say, I find the idea of sort of a moderate Taliban hard to conceive of, but certainly it is not the Afghan people. I think Zbig is absolutely right. We have to make sure we focus on people the president calls evildoers and the regime or the regimes that we need to remove.

BLITZER: Let me ask Dr. Brzezinski. Are you are suggesting there is a moderate wing of the Taliban?

BRZEZINSKI: What I'm suggesting is that it is not really central to our objective to become deeply involved in trying to establish some sort of a government that governs effectively all of Afghanistan. Our central objective, as I understand it, or at least as I define it, is to destroy the al Qaeda operation in Afghanistan, because it's symbolic, the leadership, it provides symbolic leadership, it provides some of the operational direction.

But the longer-range threat is located in the Middle East and we have to ask ourselves who has the weapons of mass destruction around the world and then finally in Western Europe and here.

BLITZER: Senator Shelby, if I hear top Bush Administration officials, whether it is Secretary Rumsfeld or others, the impression we get is that the threat is not only from al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but also from the Taliban, which is at war now with the United States.

SHELBY: I think, myself, that al Qaeda is so interwoven with the Taliban, I don't know how you differentiate it at the moment. And I think President Bush has delineated it fairly well. He says, we are not against the Afghan people, we are not fighting the Afghan people. We are fighting al Qaeda and the people who would nurture and harbor them, and that is the Taliban.

BLITZER: Dr. Brzezinski, I don't know if you want to respond to that.

BRZEZINSKI: The fact of the matter is that the Northern Alliance is composed of Tajiks and Uzbeks. We don't have the Pashtuns who are the majority of the Afghan people yet, on our side. Maybe they will come over to our side. But all I'm saying is be very careful. The Afghans are very xenophobic. If they conclude that we are waging war against them, they will rally around the Taliban. And so far, the U.S. military seems surprised that been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) support for the Taliban.

BLITZER: Mr. Woolsey, wrap up this segment. Your thought: Can the U.S. rely on those Northern Alliance forces? Because Dr. Brzezinski seems to think that they are not necessarily all that reliable.

WOOLSEY: Those are the ones with us right now. Alliances move around in this part of the world. And it could be good if we could get some Pashtun on our side. But I think Zbig is right, we can't really construct a new regime. What we have to do is get rid of one that controls there now. If I were to paraphrase Mr. Carville in 1992, I would say, "it's the regime, stupid." We need to focus on that and perhaps regimes, plural. There may be more than one regime in the Middle East that is going to have to be removed.

BLITZER: We're going to take a quick break. Still coming up: Cloaked in secrecy, human intelligence is the key to the anti-terror campaign. We'll get a behind-the-scenes report, and we'll continue our discussion on the intelligence war, in the CNN "War Room." Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. We'll resume our war room discussion in just a moment, but first, U.S. military operations in the air and on the ground depend on another campaign being fought in the shadows.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor looks at the intelligence war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When it comes to tracking Taliban tanks or troops, no nation's intelligence service could offer its military more than U.S. intelligence does. With an array of sophisticated surveillance satellites and high-tech eavesdropping capabilities, U.S. intelligence updates targeting information for American pilots in realtime.

The CIA even has predator surveillance drones armed with missiles that can and have been fired in anger.

But none of that is all that useful in finding Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, as they hide in caves or amongst sympathizers. For that the U.S. needs human intelligence.

RUMSFELD: It is going to be a scrap of information from some person, in some country.

ENSOR: The trouble is, after arming the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen in the '80s the Central Intelligence Agency pretty much pulled out of Afghanistan. Now it must rely heavily on Pakistani intelligence.

ANATOLE LIEVEN, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Their help is essential. They are the ones who know Afghanistan in a way that nobody else does.

ENSOR: But Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, helped create, and may, in turn, be infiltrated by Afghanistan's Taliban's government. On the ISI's advice, U.S. commandos conducted a nighttime raid October 19 near Kandahar. U.S. officials say the intelligence trove grabbed was not as great as had been hoped. What the U.S. really needs is its own agents inside al Qaeda, something critics like former CIA officer Reuel Gerecht charge, the agency is ill equipped to recruit.

REUEL GERECHT, FORMER CIA OFFICER: The vast majority of agency operatives are playing under official cover, they are fake diplomats. They know the cocktail circuit a hell of a lot better than they will the outside world.

ENSOR: Such criticism, says CIA spokesman Bill Harlow is totally out of date.

BILL HARLOW, CIA SPOKESMAN: I assure you that there are very risky operations going on as we speak, and have been for quite some time. It is a very dangerous business. The way we go about doing the business has changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War.

ENSOR: And infiltrating a tightly knit terrorist group is likely to take time.

WOOLSEY: You may cultivate an asset, an informant, a spy for many years, before you come up with what you need.

ENSOR (on camera): U.S. intelligence officials say that this nation is getting help now from over 100 different countries, including literally thousands of intelligence tips.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Let's continue our "War Room" discussion on the role of intelligence in this was on terrorism.

My guests, once again: the former CIA director James Woolsey; Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration; and Republican Senator Richard Shelby, the vice- chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

And, Senator Shelby, you were critical early on of the intelligence community, the mistakes that were made leading up to September 11. How are they doing right now in providing good intelligence on the conduct of this war?

SHELBY: Well, we will find out as time goes on as the campaign evolves.

They are very engaged. And let's make no mistakes about it: We have some very good people in the intelligence services. I believe that they can do better; they must do better. And we've talked about that at length before. But I believe that we have made mistakes in the past by not putting enough emphasis on the diversity of people that we could recruit in this country, including people from Afghanistan, people from all over the Middle East and Central Asia. We have some, but we don't have enough language skills, and we don't have enough diversity.

BLITZER: Dr. Brzezinski, the criticism has been that there's barely enough, if enough Arabic speakers in the U.S. intelligence community, let alone Pashtun speakers, which, of course, are desperately needed right now.

BRZEZINSKI: I think the problem is an endemic one. The U.S. intelligence, in my view, is the best in the world when it comes to technologically-derived intelligence. When it comes to political intelligence, including human assets, we simply don't have a very good tradition -- and I think it shows. We're just very, very deficient in that respect.

BLITZER: Mr. Woolsey, we have an e-mail from one of our viewers. He sent it in. John from San Antonio asked this question: "Do our military intelligence have any idea of how many Taliban troops the bombings have killed or wounded? To hear the enemy, they claim few, if any casualties."

WOOLSEY: Probably, we'll have a better idea once the Northern Alliance forces overrun their positions. But I think that, at the present writing, it's very hard to estimate, even with an unmanned aerial vehicle, with a very good camera up, just exactly how many people have been killed, particularly since a lot of this is underground.

You are talking about collapsing bunkers and shooting things into caves. And for intelligence about movements on the battlefield that you need to actually fire, things like drones, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite, real-time intelligence is relevant. For longer-term plans, and which caves have the ammunition in them and where might bin Laden be, that sort of thing, you -- it is very good to have agents. And we have not had nearly as many as we need.

BLITZER: Senator Shelby, Osama bin Laden is said to have written a letter that was released today by the Al Jazeera Arabic-language news channel out in Qatar.

Among other things he said this, supposedly Osama bin Laden: "The world has split into two parts, the part under the banner of the cross -- as the head of the infidels, Bush has said, the other part stands on the banner of Islam."

Is he scoring? Is the U.S. losing the propaganda war for the hearts and minds, not only of the Afghan people but the people of the Muslim world.

SHELBY: I hope not. And that's a real good question you ask. And we don't know the answer yet. But what we've got to do is frame the issue a little clearer on that -- and I think the president is trying to do this -- that we are not fighting the Islamic world. We are fighting the terrorists. And we are going to fight the people who nurture them.

BLITZER: It seems like they were pretty slow coming out of the box in terms of the propaganda war, Dr. Brzezinski.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, we do have a problem.

We are the ones who are doing the fighting. The Northern Alliance is waiting for us to carpet-bomb on the Taliban. They are encouraging us to engage more in tactical air attacks. We went into Afghanistan to go after the al Qaeda. That was the central mission. I think we ought to keep that very much in mind, because if we are not careful, then within a few months from now, we'll have not only the Muslim world, but probably much of Western Europe criticizing us for waging a war from afar, simply by bombing and not discriminating enough between the Afghan people and al Qaeda.

BLITZER: Dr. Brzezinski, Mr. Woolsey, Senator Shelby, good to have the three of you on our program. We'll have you back soon hopefully. Thank you very much.

And for our viewers in North America, "CROSSFIRE" comes your way at the bottom of the hour.

Bill Press joins me now live with a preview -- Bill.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": OK, Wolf.

President Bush told Congress to get to work; get the economy moving again. Yes, but how? Republicans want more tax cuts. Democrats want help for workers out of a job. So we are going to unleash Senators Charles Grassley and Dick Durbin and let them duke it out -- coming up on "CROSSFIRE," Wolf, right after you. BLITZER: Thank you very much, Bill. We will be watching.

Supreme Court justices will soon be headed back to their building -- the latest on that development when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Let's take a quick look at the latest developments: The House of Representative is moving toward a vote at this hour on an aviation security bill. Lawmakers are considering whether to join the Senate and approve a measure to make airport security workers federal employees. The Republican leaders favor a private sector work force supervised by the federal government. We will have news of that vote as soon as it happening.

California Governor Gray Davis says state officials have received credible information indicating four of California's major suspension bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, could be targeted by terrorists in the next few days.

And U.S. Supreme Court justices are going back to work in the Supreme Court Building on Monday. The building was shut down several days ago so investigators could check for anthrax. Traces of the bacteria were found in an off-site Supreme Court mail facility.

That's all the time we have tonight. Please join me again tomorrow twice, at both 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Until then, thanks very much for watching. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

"CROSSFIRE" begins right now.

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