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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Will Money Melt Away Loyalty for Osama Bin Laden?; Fighting Continues Around two Remaining Taliban Strongholds

Aired November 19, 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.
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening. I'm John King reporting tonight from Washington. Wolf Blitzer is off. As the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan begins to slip away, President Bush says the net is tightening around Osama bin Laden. But is it time for the United States to cast a wider anti-terror net? I'll ask our guests here in the war room shortly. But first let's turn to the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

Heavy fighting continues around the two remaining Taliban strongholds. And a group of journalists has been caught up in the violent chaos that reigns throughout Afghanistan.

Let's go live now to CNN's Christiane Amanpour in the capital, Kabul -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, the fate of those four journalists has still not been confirmed. What happened was that a convoy of journalists set out from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan yesterday morning, heading for here, the capital Kabul. And on the way, at least one of the lead vehicles was stopped by armed gunmen.

We don't know who they were. Were they bandits? Were they Taliban on the run? We simply don't know at the moment, but what we do know is that the remaining part of the convoy went back. And up until now, there is still no word on the fate of what happened to five people who apparently were pulled from that car that was stopped.

Amongst those missing people are two Reuters journalists, two cameramen. Also a journalist writer from Spanish newspaper "El Mundo" and a woman reporter from the Italian newspaper "Corriere Della Sera". We are trying to pin down exactly what might have happened to them. And it's probably unlikely that we'll know anything more definite before daybreak.

In the meantime, the fighting does continue in the north, which is the Taliban's last fallback position where they regrouped after the fall of many of the cities up in the north. They are under heavy attack by U.S. bombing raids up there.

They, of course, are bolstered by those Chechen, Pakistani and other Arab mercenaries, who have been fighting with them. And were also allied and linked to the al Qaeda network. The Northern Alliance, who opposes the Taliban up there, has tried to send in a delegation to negotiate a surrender. But so far, no details and no results of that.

In the meantime, the bombing raids are forcing civilians to flee from there. And there are reports that that is causing some casualties. We are unable to confirm that independently.

In Kandahar, the only seat of Taliban power, conflicting reports. Taliban claiming that they're still in control. Other sources telling CNN that a key Mullah Omar colleague, Mullah Omar being the leader of the Taliban, has switched sides. Again, we're still not sure exactly the situation there.

Here in Kabul, life is returning to normal. There are all sorts of signs every day, even the opening of the cinema after five years here, that life is returning to normal. The security situation seems to be under control. And now, it's up to the political settlement to be found.

To that end, both U.S. envoys and U.N. envoys are having talks with various faction leaders. And it appears that the Northern Alliance, after holding out somewhat, is now agreeing to meet in a neutral location outside of Afghanistan without -- with other factional leaders, perhaps sometime later this week -- John.

KING: Christiane, any indication at all, as those meetings approach and as the administration and the U.N. try to schedule those meetings, any indications that the Northern Alliance is trying to strengthen its hands, if you will, by solidifying its hold on key government institutions? Are they taking any steps to show that they are in control of important installations in the day-to-day lives of the citizens of the capital?

AMANPOUR: Well, the most obvious element of their control is the fact that they are the only armed presence in the city, and that they do have security on the street, and that they are the only military reality right now in most of Afghanistan.

Yes, they are taking over some of the ministries, but every time we press them and ask them, they say this provisional and that we're here because nobody else is here and that we don't intend to monopolize power.

U.N. also, when asked, said that the Northern Alliance came in because Kabul was ready for the taking. And they too are assessing that this is provisional. They are reminding everybody that they're in constant talks with the Northern Alliance for this future broadbased alliance to take over.

KING: Christiane Amanpour joining us live from the Afghan capital of Kabul. Thank you very much.

And the Pentagon is hoping big money will melt away loyalty for Osama bin Laden and help capture the elusive terrorist suspect. The lure, a $25 million reward. CNN military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre joins us live from the Pentagon with more on the hunt for bin Laden -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well John, even as the United States continues to increase the number of special operation forces teams it has operating in Afghanistan, the CIA is handing out money in the country, in the hopes that Osama bin Laden will be turned in by someone in Afghanistan, perhaps even betrayed by one of his own.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Sources say the best U.S. intelligence indicates Osama bin Laden and his protectors are still in Afghanistan, in the vicinity of Kandahar, but on the move.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: To try and think that we have them contained in some sort of a small area, I think, would be a misunderstanding of the difficulty of the task.

MCINTYRE: U.S. bombing is now concentrating on sealing caves and tunnels used by bin Laden's al Qaeda network, but the Pentagon says it is not conducting a cave-by-cave search. That would require a much different force than the small, but ever-growing number of American special forces now on the ground in Afghanistan.

Instead, the U.S. is banking on bounty hunters, lured by a $25 million reward, to give bin Laden up.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I told the American people right from the get go of this effort, it may take a month, it may take a year. Well, however long it takes, we'll succeed.

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon says fighting is currently stalemated around the last two Taliban strongholds, Kandahar in the south and Konduz in the north, as opposition forces try to negotiate a surrender by the most fanatical al Qaeda and Taliban troops.

In Konduz, U.S. intelligence reports say as many as 100 Taliban fighters have been killed by hardline Taliban and al Qaeda troops to prevent their surrender.

RUMSFELD: I have seen reports that people have been found with bullets in their heads, and not in the fronts.

MCINTYRE: The U.S. says it is not taking prisoners because of its small number of troops on the ground, and that the Taliban who want to give up, must surrender to opposition forces.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): And the Pentagon says it has no intention of allowing Taliban leader Mohammed Omar safe passage, no matter what kind of deal he cuts. Asked if the United States would knowingly allow Omar to slip out of Kandahar, Rumsfeld replied tersely, "no, we would not." -- John. KING: Jamie, terse comments from the Defense Secretary as well. When asked about reports in recent days that perhaps the Pentagon was tying the hands of the commanders in the field, bureaucratic red tape slowing down targeting decisions, perhaps missed opportunities. What did the Secretary have to say about those questions?

MCINTYRE: Well, Rumsfeld didn't dispute the fact that there might be some generals in the chain of command a little frustrated by the process, but he stressed that that's the case in any military campaign. And he said that the reason that General Franks was paid they money he's paid is to make the kind of decisions he makes, to weigh the cost of potential civil casualties and what political support that could cost the United States against a military objective.

And he said he gave Franks a ringing endorsement, saying he was doing a darn good job.

KING: Jamie McIntyre reporting live from the Pentagon. Thank you very much.

Now concerned with holding its fragile anti-terror coalition together, the Bush administration may be seeking to take the festering Israeli-Palestinian issue out of the hands of Osama bin Laden and others, who would use it to foment more widespread violence. The United States today urged both sides to move toward a settlement that would allow them to live peacefully in separate states.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: It is time. No, it is past time to end this terrible toll on the future. It is time. It, past time to bring the violence to an end and to seek a better day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, the former U.S. commander in the region, will return, this time as special envoy and resident arm-twister, trying to push the parties toward a cease- fire.

Will the United States catch up with Osama bin Laden? And what happens then?

Joining me here in the war room, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's defense policy board and a former assistant Defense Secretary; Michael Vickers a former special forces officer and CIA operative who has advised the Pentagon on strategic planning; and Robert Hunter, the former U.S. ambassador to Nato.

You can send us your war room questions at www.cnn.com/wolf. I want to get from each of you, your latest on the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. But first, let's pay respect to the commander in chief, his latest assessment first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: We're hunting him down. He runs and he hides. And -- but, as we have said repeatedly, the noose is beginning to narrow. The net is getting tighter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Richard Perle, a fair assessment. And if the net is tighter, what next?

RICHARD PERLE, CHMN., DEFENSE POLICY BOARD: Well, I think it is getting tighter. And eventually, we will get Osama bin Laden and the rest of that crowd. And the challenge then will be to continue the war on terrorism because it goes far beyond bin Laden, far beyond the Taliban.

KING: We will follow-up on that point going beyond the Taliban and bin Laden in just a minute.

Michael Vickers, special operations experience, you have. If the net is tighter and the circle is smaller, what now? Where is bin Laden and how do you get him?

MICHAEL VICKERS, FMR. SPECIAL OPS AND DIR. OFFICER: Well, best reports suggest that he's in the vicinity of Kandahar, perhaps within 100 miles or so. But there have been other reports that he's in Aruzgun (ph) province or even Jalalabad. So still somewhere in southeastern Afghanistan.

But the noose is tightening. We're putting a lot of surveillance aircraft over a smaller area. The number of special forces has doubled in the area. There's this Afghan lottery now of $25 million. Anyone want to claim it for information. And a lot of informants, and of course, opposition forces led by American advisers. So there's a lot of aspect or different forces being to bear on Osama.

KING: But So are far, the fighting done almost exclusively by rebel forces, the Northern Alliance, with help from the United States. In searching for Osama bin Laden, do you trust the Northern Alliance to go looking for him in the mountains, in the hills, in the caves? Or do U.S. special forces, perhaps with some help from allies, have to do that dirty work?

VICKERS: Well, if it's going to be cave to cave, which we hope it won't. I mean, we'd like to drop a bomb on him or get him in an ambush with special forces. But if it's going to be cave to cave, then it really probably is going to be Afghan forces that find him. And in this case, it might be Pashtun, rather than Northern Alliance.

KING: Father Hunter, let me bring you in on an e-mail question. Ted in British Columbia ask this question. "There's a possibility that Osama bin Laden may never be found, buried in a cave from an airstrike. Will the United States settle for not knowing if he's dead or not? And if so, what kind of a conundrum would that present, not knowing whether he's dead or whether he's somehow escaped?

ROBERT HUNTER, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: Well, I think we would rather not settle for that. Most important thing is to take him out of the business and to take al Qaeda out of the business and to take every other terrorist in the region and elsewhere, coming against us, coming against our friends and allies out of the business.

Now if we never find the guy because he's been buried under a pile of rubble, well, we'll have to live with that. But the most important thing is to get him out the business. And we've just about achieved that. And it'd be a mistake, I think, to try to set the standard of hunt for the one guy around there. He runs all over.

Simultaneously, we need to dismantle, dismantle, kill and destroy the rest of this octopus, even if we don't get the head of it.

KING: Well, more focus today on this $25 million reward. Any confidence at all that somebody close to Osama bin Laden would turn him in for money?

HUNTER: Well, I'll be going over there myself if it gets a little higher.

(LAUGHTER)

Sure. I think there's no honor among thieves. And there might be a tight group around them, but that's an awful lot of money over there. That's about a billion dollars in American currency. So I wouldn't be surprised -- we may have three or four people turned in, that don't look like Osama that we're going to have to sort out which is the real one.

KING: OK, Richard Perle, this e-mail question to you. What will America do, this is from Anthony in Denmark, what will America do if Osama bin Laden and his associates have escaped to other countries?

A, do you think that's a realistic possibility. If so, where would he go? I assume there's no question in the world right now that would say, "We welcome Osama bin Laden." Where would he go? And what does the United States do then if he does escape?

PERLE: I think it's unlikely that he'll escape. He would not be welcome openly in any country, although there are countries that might conceivably run the risk of harboring him furtively.

I think that's unlikely. He's likely to die in Afghanistan. If he did get to another country, then we will have to take war to the country that he goes to. We're not going to give him sanctuary somewhere else.

KING: Who would be the most likely -- where would be the most likely country? Start with you, Michael Vickers. Perhaps Somalia, a place where he's done business before?

VICKERS: Well, there's been talk of Sudan, where he's been before, Somalia, which is failed state or maybe Chechnya. But as Richard said, they're all hard to get to. It's kind of hard to imagine him getting out of Afghanistan. Perhaps he could slip across the border into Baluchistan (ph), but that's hard to see him getting from there.

KING: And this question. The President said at the beginning, wanted dead or alive. As the President says the net is tightening, the noose is tightening. A preference, dead or alive?

HUNTER: Take him any way we can get him. Obviously, it's going to be easier on everybody if he gets killed in battle or some other way. But I tell you, one of the arguments that's made that somehow if you put him in a court, he's going to get to spout all this nonsense and convert zillions of people.

I don't think that's true. I think that if he were put in an open...

(AUDIO GAP)

...save us the expense of a trial and the uncertainty of a trial. If we applied our judicial standards, which of course, he doesn't and wouldn't, who knows what the evidence would look like.

HUNTER: Pretty overwhelming at this point.

VICKERS: Well, he seems to have admitted it. So if we can take that confession as evidence then, I suppose we could get a conviction. And I think it's far better...

HUNTER: Nobody read him his Miranda rights, but I think we can overlook it this time.

KING: All right, let's hit the pause button right there for a moment. We'll be back. Coming up in the war room, should Iraq's Saddam Hussein be the next target for the war on terrorism?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to the war room. Once the United States deals with Osama bin Laden, should it turn its anti-terror fury on Iraq's Saddam Hussein? That would be a big way to enter what the administration would call Phase II. And before we turn to our guests, first this thought. And I want you each to jump in on this one.

Bill Safire, writing today in "The New York Times." Says, "We turn to what the Bush people call phase 2, the dangerously unfinished business of eliminating the threat from nuclear and biological weapons in Iraq. Baghdad is now the world center of state terrorism."

Richard Perle, next phase Saddam Hussein?

PERLE: Absolutely.

KING: How and why?

PERLE: Well for several reasons. We know he supports terrorism. We caught him red handed, attempting to assassinate a former president. We know he has weapons of mass destruction, anthrax, chemical weapons and others. And he's actually used nerve agent against innocent civilians.

We know he hates the United States. And indeed, he hates the Bush family in that blood feud attitude that's distinctive to that region of the world. So for all of those reasons, he poses a threat to the United States. He could, at any time, turn weapons of mass destruction over to terrorists. And we could never be sure that he was the source. So before he takes action against us, we had better take action against him.

KING: Ambassador Hunter, we knew all of those things. If you accept Mr. Perle's argument, then all those things were known on September 10. And we were not at war against Saddam Hussein. Desert Storm 2, just bomb Baghdad?

HUNTER: I agree with Richard. This is probably the most critical thing we face now in terms of threats, not just the United States, but the outside world. That Saddam Hussein, premiere among the people getting weapons of mass destruction, most likely to use them or even just a blackmail and do all of the other things that we saw before.

And I have two phase twos. One is continue to go after the regular kinds of terrorism everywhere, but then get your plans laid for doing Iraq. Not just flail at them before you have things prepared. You got a different kind of battle. You've got to prepare a bunch of allies. You've got to get regional bases. You've got to get this so that when we do it, not only are we certain of winning, because you don't win this thing, you're really in trouble. And you have a lot of people with you as you go about it.

After all right now, there's no smoking gun at the moment, the way there was when he invaded Kuwait. You got to be serious about it, but you got to get it done.

KING: The President had a special dinner at the White House tonight to pay tribute to the Muslim holy period of Ramadan. Obviously, part of the diplomatic outreach to the Arab and the Muslim world. What would happen to the coalition if the United States bombed Iraq?

HUNTER: Depends on how you do it. If you build from the ground up, and you start bringing people with you, you make your case, you show what you're going to do, you show what the results are going to be. And also, you start giving people an indication of what the goal is. If they think, well, you know, Iraq today and I'm next, a lot of people aren't going to support that.

KING: But if you make your case, he knows it's coming.

HUNTER: There will be dancing in the streets in Iraq if we get rid of Saddam Hussein. The idea that the Arab admires and respects Saddam Hussein is absurd. The idea that this would be regarded as an attack on Islam is absurd.

Saddam Hussein, by the way, is not religious himself. But be that as it may, he carries out a war of terror against his own people. He is loathed and detested in his own country. We would be seen as liberators in Iraq. And that would have a galvanizing effect in the whole of the Arab world.

KING: Michael Vickers, the view from a diplomat and one of the planners and thinkers of military? Special operations or is the United States equipped right now to fight in Afghanistan, perhaps to be looking around the world at terrorist cells and to stage a major military operation against Saddam Hussein?

VICKERS: Well, I think the war against each of these three targets, if you will, require different means of response. The global war against terrorism outside of Afghanistan is largely an intelligence, diplomatic, law enforcement and security assistance problem.

For example, dealing with Abu Sayaf in the Philippines and these prominent arrests today in Spain and Europe is the way we'll bust up a lot of the al Qaeda network. The --overthrowing Saddam may be done by supporting the Iraqi opposition, but it's probably going to require a lot more American military power than we used in Afghanistan.

And so again, special forces will be doing different things, but more likely we'll be using other instruments.

KING: Let's go quickly around the panel. Starting with Mr. Perle. If this military campaign spills out of Afghanistan and there is a phase 2 involving military strikes somewhere else, will it be Iraq or will it be somewhere else?

PERLE: I think it'll be Iraq. And I think it will be much easier than people think. The same people who were saying that it's very difficult to win in Iraq, said it was going to be very difficult to win in Afghanistan.

HUNTER: Long term, got to be Iraq, but you got to prepare the way because I'm not convinced, not willing to bet a lot of American lives, that it'll be a walkover.

KING: Michael Vickers?

VICKERS: I think the easy part of the war, just like in Afghanistan, the northern part of the country was much easier to do than the south. Killing a lot of the Iraqi army, outside of Baghdad, is a relatively easy proposition. We could seize large portions of Iraq and destroy the Iraqi army. It's the Baghdad part that is operationally challenging. And as Ambassador Hunter said, the diplomatic part is even more challenging.

KING: I suspect we will be talking more about this in the days and weeks and indeed months ahead. I'd like to thank Richard Perle, Robert Hunter, Michael Vickers.

I'll be back in the war room when Mr. Blitzer returns, if not sooner. Thank you all very much.

Now the nation's airline industry will soon take off in a new direction. Coming up, sweeping aviation security measures aimed at grounding fears in making your next trip safer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back. Here's a quick look at the latest developments. Four journalists are missing in Afghanistan and feared dead. Their unguarded convoy was attacked by gunmen today, while on the way to Kabul. Reports that the journalists were killed have not been confirmed.

President Bush today signed the aviation security law, aimed at improving airport safety. It clears the way for armed marshals on every federal flight, if necessary, and makes baggage screeners federal employees.

That's all the time we have tonight. Please join me again tomorrow at both 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Until then, thanks very much for watching.

I'm John King in Washington.

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