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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Is Osama bin Laden Still in Afghanistan?; Is the War All but Over?

Aired November 15, 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: His regime has been shattered, but Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar warns there are still plans for America's destruction. As fighting continues in Afghanistan, the U.S. looks for more targets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, COMMANDER, CENTRAL COMMAND: As the Taliban fractures, we'll continue to be about the mission that I described initially, the destruction of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: But is Osama bin Laden still in Afghanistan?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think we'll find him either there or in some other country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We'll go live to Kabul and to the Pentagon.

Is it all but over in Afghanistan? What happens next? I'll ask Ken Adelman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, former Congressman Charlie Wilson, a long-time supporter of Pakistan, and Kelly McCann, who's taught counterterrorism to military and police agencies in the U.S. and abroad as we go into THE WAR ROOM.

Good evening, I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting tonight from Washington.

The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, says his forces are determined to pursue their war against the United States. He also predicts the United States will be destroyed in the process.

At the same time, there's confirmation that nuclear-related documents have been found at an al Qaeda building in Kabul. We'll have details of all of that coming up.

But we begin with the rapidly changing situation on the ground inside Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance says it has taken another key city, while heavy fighting is reported in yet other cities. CNN's Christiane Amanpour joins us now live from Kabul with all the latest developments -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, as you say military activity around the country here in Kabul, Northern Alliance consolidating their hold on this city and it is calm.

But in the last day, journalists have been going to a neighborhood of Kabul that has been occupied by senior Taliban members and indeed Arab members of the Taliban force that were with the Taliban before they were routed. And, journalists have found piles of documents and other evidence that seems to point to all sorts of plans and plots being carried out by these people.

This is just one textbook in which there's a diagram which we have had translated which we are told looks like instructions on how to build a crude bomb.

Also, we have found grenades and other ammunition and chemicals in one building, what amounts to a terrorist handbook, diagrams on how to build, as I say, bombs.

Also, we had a printed document that was found with the English words printed in English and underlined by whoever had this text "anthrax and mustard gas" and also instructions and directions that this germ had to be transmitted through ventilation systems for delivery.

And another rather chilling document showed the word "atomic terror" underlined and that indeed said that we predict that this terror would happen in the future.

We have to say that we do not know exactly what these documents are. We don't know whether they were copied from material that's already in the public domain. But certainly these kind of documents and the other evidence that was found in these buildings point to people at least trying to get that information and being stored in these places here in Kabul.

Now, in Jalalabad there has been confirmation by the Northern Alliance that Jalalabad has fallen, and somewhat conflicting reports as to who, in fact, holds Jalalabad.

The Northern Alliance is saying that one of their senior members, one of their senior former Mujahadeen members who also happens to be a Pashtun is in charge of Jalalabad and has addressed Jalalabad and the crowds there. Another report suggests that it would be a competing Pashtun tribal leader that may be in control of Jalalabad.

In Kandahar, U.S. officials are saying that fierce battles continue there between anti-Taliban forces and the Taliban who are still there. A CNN source there says that thousands of Taliban in retreat from Kabul and other areas have fallen back to positions in Kandahar, and there are also reports that battles are underway to hold onto the airport by the Taliban forces there. In Konduz, in Northern Afghanistan, Taliban forces which retreated after northern Afghan towns fell last week, have gathered and are battling with Northern Alliance forces up there.

We've been told by Northern Alliance forces that they believe the Taliban have a number of tanks and heavy artillery pieces and that it is quite a heavy battle up there -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour in Kabul, thank you very much.

And while the campaign against the Taliban continues, U.S. forces are now focusing on another target. CNN military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre joins us now live from the Pentagon with that -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the ground war is well underway in Afghanistan with teams of U.S. Special Forces now conducting operations in increasing numbers. But at this point, the Pentagon still won't say exactly how many U.S. troops are on the ground, or precisely what they're doing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): In southern Afghanistan, the manhunt is on for Osama bin Laden, with dozens of U.S. Special Forces roaming the rugged terrain, gathering intelligence.

FRANKS: This gives us the capability to have situational awareness, not to an extent I would be quick to add that we'd like to have because these small teams, these small numbers that we have on the ground certainly can't be everywhere all the time.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon insists it is closing in on bin Laden.

RUMSFELD: It's a large country with a lot of borders. One has to be realistic. I think we'll find him, either there or in some other country, but one has to be realistic.

FRANKS: We're tightening the noose. It's a matter of time.

MCINTYRE: Roughly, the same number of U.S. warplanes are conducting daily bombing runs against Taliban targets, but the strikes are becoming more focused say Pentagon officials.

On Thursday, some 80 U.S. warplanes concentrated on three key engagement zones: around Kandahar, Kabul and Konduz. Konduz is the last major pocket of Taliban resistance in the north where the Pentagon estimates between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters, including some fanatical al Qaeda troops are still holding out.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said he was not aware of any overtures from Taliban leaders to negotiate a turnover of bin Laden, insisting the U.S. is not going to cut any deals.

RUMSFELD: Would we be delighted to receive senior al Qaeda and Taliban leadership through some process where they were offered up? Without condition, yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (on camera): As most of Afghanistan falls into friendly hands, the United States has begun another mission: checking out sites where Osama bin Laden is believed to have been working on chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.

One such site is a building in the north that the Taliban claims was a factory for anthrax vaccine -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Jamie, do you have any more details on these facilities, these chemical, biological facilities in Afghanistan?

MCINTYRE: Well, Wolf, as you're aware, U.S. intelligence has suspected for a while that there have been a number of so-called dual use facilities in Afghanistan, things that may have a legitimate civilian use, such as a fertilizer factory at another location that they're checking out, but could also be used to make biological or chemical agents.

Now that those facilities are in the hands of the Northern Alliance, the U.S. will have access to them. They'll be able to inspect them, take a look at them, and see if their intelligence was correct. But it's not something that's going to be done quickly. The U.S. says it doesn't expect to have any reports back from those sites at least for several days.

BLITZER: Jamie McIntyre over at the Pentagon, thanks once again.

Meanwhile, two American aid workers freed from Afghanistan reportedly will spend Thanksgiving abroad with their families before returning to the United States.

The women are among eight people airlifted out of Afghanistan by U.S. Special Operations forces. Heather Mercer and Dana Currie were held by the Taliban for more than three months, accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. They were handed over to the International Red Cross when opposition forces took the area where they were being held.

Is the Afghanistan situation well in hand, or is the chaos just beginning?

Joining me now here in the CNN WAR ROOM: Ken Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Policy Board; Kelly McCann, CEO of Crucible Securities, trained thousands of military personnel in anti-terror techniques; and former Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson of Texas. He worked to arm anti-Soviet Afghan rebels, now represents the Pakistani Government here in Washington. You can send us your questions by the way. Just e-mail us at: cnn.com/wolf.

Let me begin with you, Ken Adelman. These nuclear documents that were discovered in Afghanistan, al Qaeda buildings, do you believe -- you're a former director of the Arms Control Disarmament Agency, that al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden has some sort of crude nuclear capability? KEN ADELMAN, FORMER U.S. ARMS CONTROL DIRECTOR: No, I do not believe that. I believe that they were pursuing it with every fiber in their being and they wanted the maximum way to destroy civilization and especially to destroy America. It shows how important it is to get out there and beat the international terrorist network and go after weapons of mass destruction. That's the lesson.

BLITZER: Charlie Wilson, you've been following the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan for what, 20 years. Let me read to you what Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, said today in a BBC interview.

He said "the current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause, that is the destruction of America. If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time. Keep in mind this prediction." Is he simply boasting, or is there something that Americans have to be worried about?

CHARLIE WILSON, FORMER CONGRESSMAN: If it were Mullah Omar, I think I'd be worried a little bit more about my own backside than I would about destroying the United States.

I think as Ken would say that there's always a possibility of anthrax or similar chemical. We've seen already just how much chaos was caused by two or three envelopes. But I don't take it seriously and I don't think that they're a threat.

BLITZER: Kelly, do you think anybody should take that kind of boasting seriously?

KELLY MCCANN, CEO, CRUCIBLE: There's a little bit of concern about Paraguay and about a vortex going on down there and maybe some Soviet nuclear artillery rounds, but in order to transfer that into a weapon with a trigger and then be able to actually create the kind of damage it was meant to, he probably doesn't have that technology.

But I'd be willing to bet, and probably you would agree, that there is fissionable material around and there are some nuclear devices around. Whether he has the technology to make them work is a different story.

ADELMAN: The main thing you have to watch for is a state. It is different having Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda who live in the caves and operate individually. When you have a state Wolf, you have tax receipts. You have big research facilities. You have a big army. You have a big deal there.

And somebody like Saddam Hussein, who has the big deal going on, can get weapons of mass destruction, develop nuclear arms, develop chemical, develop biological in staggering proportions.

WILSON: I think both of you would probably agree though that...

ADELMAN: Let's not agree too much.

WILSON: Don't agree too much, all right. But my view with the... ADELMAN: I disagree with the principle.

WILSON: -- you disagree with the principle but my view would be that the possibility of chemical and biological is a lot greater than the possibility of them being able to set off a nuclear device.

MCCANN: Absolutely. Definitely.

ADELMAN: Right. Kelly knows that this radiological weapon is a serious thing. A dirty bomb is a serious thing.

BLITZER: All of those scenarios are nightmares. Charlie Wilson, I want to go to the map and show what the Northern Alliance has done over the past day. You can see it over here on the monitor. Take a look over here.

These are the areas, everything below Herat, this red area controlled by the Northern Alliance, down here, Kandahar, the stronghold of the Taliban. It's believed Osama bin Laden is someplace down here, although of course no one knows for sure except for he and his immediate supporters.

The Northern Alliance seems to have done pretty well so far. You have to give them some credit.

WILSON: I've got to say that probably nobody's been more wrong than I was because I just didn't think the Northern Alliance really had it in them. Of course, I think that nobody anticipated, just like they didn't anticipate in Serbia and they didn't anticipate in Bosnia, the incredible effectiveness of American bombing now. It's just eons ahead of where it was ten or seven years ago.

But the thing that worries me a little bit about the Northern...

BLITZER: Let him just finish about what worries him. Go ahead.

WILSON: OK. The thing that worries me about the Northern Alliance, and of course I applaud their success, their success is our success, but the thing that worries me about them is that the Northern Alliance doesn't have any Pashtuns in it.

The Pashtuns are the heavy majority in Afghanistan, and I'm afraid that the way it's beginning to look on the ground, you know, the Northern Alliance promised President Bush, they promised Secretary Powell that they would not go into Kabul and they did.

Besides that, it is -- I understood today from Interfax Asia, which is a fairly credible news organization in Moscow, in fact a really credible one by my terms, that Rabbani was in Kabul today and that had declared amnesty. Well Rabbani's not the President.

BLITZER: Well, let me bring Kelly in. You wanted to weigh in.

MCCANN: Two important points. One is recent, pretty exhaustive research by Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman on killing reveals that bombing is effective and it has a direct tactical effect on your enemy. However, it has a long-term effect of loathing in the population.

And, we've got to -- you're right, I mean the bombing is definitely successful. We're getting tactical gains we couldn't imagine which is great.

BLITZER: What you're saying is the air strikes could cause the U.S. a lot of grief down the road?

MCCANN: Yes, and also the second point, and interesting Wolf, is that initially when this war broke out, of course the plan's never been made public and everyone thought that this was a Special Forces only war and that created a lot of concern about using Special Forces in a conventional manner, and also that that's a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) doctrine.

Actually, what happened is they were used, unconventional forces unconventionally to support a conventional force who turned out to be the Northern Alliance.

BLITZER: Is the U.S. going to regret this, Ken?

ADELMAN: No, let's not get too detailed on all this and too sophisticated. Our goals were pretty simple and the goal was to get rid of the Taliban. Start this process around the world -

WILSON: Especially Osama bin Laden.

ADELMAN: ... start not necessarily.

MCCANN: It was to break the back of the network.

ADELMAN: Not necessarily.

WILSON: Yes, destroy the network, the al Qaeda.

ADELMAN: Destroy the network but the main point here Charlie is to start reversing governments that fund and host and harbor terrorism.

WILSON: Absolutely.

ADELMAN: And once -- and one of the lessons we saw just this week is that there is a difference for Osama bin Laden living in the Taliban Afghanistan where he can sleep at night and he kind of controls the government and everybody's hunky-dory and happy with him, or be on the run.

It's a difference between being on the march or on the run and he is now on the run.

BLITZER: Let me bring a question from one of our viewers, Narian (ph) of India e-mailed us this question. "Has the coalition carried out a poorly planned operation by not being ready with alternatives to the Taliban" -- Charlie Wilson.

WILSON: Well, I think that's possible and what my point is over and over is that the Northern Alliance is acting as if the Pashtuns don't exist. The Northern Alliance is acting as if they're the government of Afghanistan.

Now they tried that once and it doesn't work very well. You're not going to have any meaningful government in Afghanistan without a strong Pashtun participation.

ADELMAN: I think Charlie has a good point and that's my second objective. The first objective is to get rid of the Taliban, get rid of the government that supports international terrorism, and I'd almost take any, any government that does not export terrorism.

MCCANN: That's great blue arrow talk. That's fantastic blue arrow talk.

BLITZER: What's blue arrow talk?

MCCANN: Big strategic talk. Let's talk about what can hurt Americans. Afghanistan's the size of the state of Texas. Let's say we just stopped. You can't move without someone knowing that you did in Afghanistan. But any combat leader knows that he's got to seek the soft underbelly of the battlefield.

It's not Afghanistan. The al Qaeda has one place to go and that's domestically. Any commander can see that plainly. They can't do anything to create harm or to project power beyond their borders from inside Afghanistan.

However, the people who are international, working in cells, moving things around through porous borders found in Central and South America, and other places in Europe, you can bet that it becomes very obvious that the only place to bring this war to make a tactical effect is here.

So, blue arrow talk is great.

BLITZER: I still don't know what blue arrow talk is. We're talking blue arrow talk. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to talk not blue arrow, some other kind of arrows.

Let's take a break. When we come back, stepping up the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to our CNN WAR ROOM. We have this just in from our national security correspondent, David Ensor. He's reporting, quoting U.S. officials, that a group of senior Taliban leaders were captured Wednesday by opposition forces, meaning the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials, he says, hope the development could lead to an intelligence dividend, U.S. intelligence, of course, actively seeking the whereabouts of the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

We have a question that came in earlier from Jerry, a retired U.S. Army, Fort Myers, Florida. He asked us this question, "What do you do with the captured Taliban and al Qaeda troops?" What do you do with them? You're a former U.N. Ambassador.

ADELMAN: I have no idea. I have no idea. Kelly will tell us.

BLITZER: What do you do with these guys?

MCCANN: It's not blue arrow. It is a problem, because you have to handle these people and you have to handle them ethically, obviously is what we'd like to do to maintain support for the Northern Alliance. And you are going to see some reprisals because of the kind of treatment that they...

ADELMAN: By the Northern Alliance.

MCCANN: Absolutely. But, to the extent possible, I think that the advisers are there to kind of guide them, kind of create a buffer and show them the benefit of proper treatment, and then try to repatriate them. I mean, that's the standard thing we do in warfare is repatriate people who are prisoners, basically render them incapable of hurting anyone.

ADELMAN: What's really surprising is after all those years they were in power there, how they were detested.

MCCANN: Absolutely.

ADELMAN: Once the momentum went our way, what you saw are people getting their beards cut off, music for the first time.

MCCANN: Dancing.

ADELMAN: Dancing, women wanting...

WILSON: Women showing their faces.

ADELMAN: Girls and women want to go to school.

BLITZER: The United States is allied in this war right now with Pakistan. The United States is allied with the Northern Alliance. Why can't the Northern Alliance be friends with Pakistan?

WILSON: Oh, I think they can but I think that Pakistan understands that, I think that Pakistan understands that there can be no meaningful government in Afghanistan without a strong Pashtun presence.

BLITZER: But I think the Northern Alliance understands that as well.

WILSON: Well, they haven't shown it in the past.

BLITZER: They're looking for Pashtun supporters, the Northern Alliance. If you speak to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, their Foreign Minister, I interviewed him.

WILSON: Well, I would ask you why they contradicted their agreement with the King, not to go into Kabul. Why they...

ADELMAN: Well, they say apparently when you're right outside the capitol and you're on the march right there, you're going to stop on the outskirts of Kabul. You wouldn't do that in a minute Charlie. You know that.

WILSON: I am very worried.

ADELMAN: You're a tough character.

WILSON: I'm very worried about the Northern Alliance, who I admire their successes and I have friends there. Mr. Rabbani, for instance, his forces took me into Afghanistan one time in the '80s.

But if they can sink their roots into Kabul, if they get -- I understand they've taken the Foreign Ministry for whatever that means, maybe a building, taken the Ministry of the Interior which is more serious, and it's going to be very hard to move them out, and we will have a meaningful government and we'll get into the same sort of thing we did last time and we'll abandon...

BLITZER: All of that is going to come later. Right now the need is, from the U.S. perspective, to win this war. I'm going to read another question for Kelly from Dave in Philadelphia. He asked us this question, "In the search for Osama bin Laden among others, will it be possible to conduct thermal scans of the mountains for heat sources in the winter?"

MCCANN: Yes, we have thermal capability. We're at fourth generation night vision devices which are not thermal but other, and a combination of those forward-looking infrared devices and all that will give us what we need.

Now it's a function of how deep you can see. These devices, you know I would say that when we get into the cave type situations, they'll be cleared by space, and only after we are sure that we can minimize casualties from booby traps and, you know, interior barricades, things like that. But, absolutely we are.

BLITZER: Let's go around.

ADELMAN: I think a manhunt is very difficult in a land like that.

MCCANN: Extremely difficult.

ADELMAN: And Kelly knows more about it than I do. I think trying to find one person or a group of people that is very few, is a very hard thing.

BLITZER: You know, the American public is not going to think this is a victory unless the U.S. captures or kills Osama bin Laden.

ADELMAN: No, but I think that's wrong. I think what we should do is have a victory when we start making the world safe for civilization. MCCANN: Amen. There you go.

ADELMAN: When we stop going after governments that host and fund terrorist organizations, because they're the weak link in the chain.

MCCANN: The potential set up here was, and I couldn't agree more, was when people started to vilify just bin Laden, 1.8 billion Muslim people in the world, some of them or many of them uneducated, not because of their own situation but because it's beyond their control, when we say bin Laden, bin Laden, bin Laden, that means that if you don't come out with him provable, this is his cadaver, you lose regardless of what you do.

ADELMAN: And that's not a good standard.

MCCANN: That's exactly right.

BLITZER: What's going to be the outcome of this in the short term?

WILSON: Oh, in the short term, we're going to be looking for bin Laden probably a long time. We'll be looking for the al Qaeda apparatus for a long time. But I believe in the short term, that the -- hopefully we've allied with the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan. Hopefully the Taliban will collapse.

BLITZER: All right. We're going to leave it right there. Charlie, Ken, Kelly thank you.

MCCANN: Thanks Wolf.

BLITZER: And more than two months after the September hijackings, a breakthrough on airline security. We'll look at that and some of the other latest developments when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Here are some of the latest developments we're following. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says nuclear related documents were found in an al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan, but he says the information is the kind that can be found also on the Internet.

Congress and the White House have reached a compromise on an airline security bill, and it will make all airport screeners Federal employees. Airports can return to private contractors after three years.

And two American aid workers were released from Afghanistan. They're said to be in good condition. The women and six others were held by the Taliban for three months.

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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