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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

The War Room: Osama bin Laden's New Videotape

Aired December 26, 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, HOST: Tonight on WOLF BLITZER REPORTS, the War Room.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator): Our terror against America is blessed terror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: A new videotape from Osama bin Laden, ominous words, and a heightened mystery. Where is he now?

We'll have reaction and go live to Afghanistan. And I'll speak live with former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former Congressman Charlie Wilson, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker, as we go into the War Room.

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

Osama bin Laden may be down, but he's apparently not yet out. He made another appearance today on videotape. The Arab news network Al Jazeera broadcast a five-minute excerpt, promising to air much more of it tomorrow. Al Jazeera executives say they don't know where or when the tape was recorded.

While it doesn't answer the question, Where is Osama bin Laden? It does offer a new glimpse of the al Qaeda leader looking the worse for wear but sounding as menacing as ever.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIN LADEN (through translator): After three months, since the attacks, the blessed attacks against -- that took place against the head of the snake, the United States, and after two months since the crusader campaign started against Islam, we would like to speak on some of the implications of those incidents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: There's no sense of remorse from bin Laden, who accuses the West of hating Islam and links al Qaeda's actions to the Middle East conflict. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIN LADEN (through translator): They condemn terror. We say our terror against America is blessed terror, in order to put an end to suppression, in order for the United States to stop its support to Israel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Al Jazeera says the entire 34-minute tape, received from Pakistan, will be aired tomorrow.

For more on this late development, let's bring in our national security correspondent, David Ensor. He's here in our Washington bureau. He's monitoring reaction.

David, what do you have?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Bush administration is decidedly underwhelmed by what they've so far seen of this videotape, Wolf. The White House saying that this is more of the usual anti-Western rhetoric from bin Laden.

Officials who follow bin Laden closely, who have seen the other tapes and analyzed them closely, say that to them, he looks pasty, that he looks as if he's a man who hasn't had much sleep, hasn't been out in the sun in days, and is under stress, as compared with previous videotapes, like the one in 1998, as that picture shows, or even the more recent one that was in early November, November 8 or 9.

One thing officials point out is that all you can tell from this tape is that it was made after November 16. You can't tell whether he's still alive, you can't even tell if it was made in December. It was apparently made to be released on or around December 11, and for whatever reason, it only got to Al Jazeera yesterday.

But he refers to an incident, to a U.S. bombing in Khost, that -- where a mosque was partially damaged that occurred on November 16. He -- occurs -- he speaks of that as having happened within the last few days. So U.S. officials believe this was probably made, then, in the sort of 17th, 18th, 19th of November type time period, with the intention being that it would be released in mid-November.

As they say, it is -- it is offers no evidence, Wolf, whether the man is alive still or not.

BLITZER: And just correct me if I'm wrong, David, are they no longer questioning the authenticity of this videotape? I know the White House -- White House officials have been having some reaction to it as well.

ENSOR: Well, they are waiting to see the full videotape. Al Jazeera, for whatever reasons, chose not to release the videotape today but to put out a snippet of it and say that they would release the rest tomorrow. Obviously Bush administration and other U.S. officials will be watching for that tape very closely, and they'll look for any clues that they can find.

But as I say, they think that it was made in mid- to late November, and would not, probably, therefore reveal much about where he is now and whether he's alive or not. And that's what people care about, of course.

BLITZER: OK, David Ensor, our national security correspondent, thank you very much.

And whether or not it provides any new clues, the new tape will likely fuel the U.S. desire to find Osama bin Laden.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live on the scene in Jalalabad with the latest on the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

What is the latest, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, U.S. special forces are still busy in the Tora Bora mountains doing their cave-to-cave searches. Just yesterday they were spotted on six all-terrain vehicles, those four-wheel-drive motorbike-type vehicles that give you great access in rugged terrain, and that's exactly what's needed in those mountains.

It's very, very difficult to get access. We've walked many hours in the mountains, and it's the -- we haven't seen these huge supercaves yet. So wherever they are, they are clearly high in the mountains and clearly difficult to access.

We've also been told by villagers up there in the mountains that they have been told, they say they've been told by special forces, not to bury dead bodies found on the mountainside. Now, the villagers say in another village higher up in the mountains, there are 28 what they think are dead al Qaeda lying around. And in another place, they say there are another 25 what they call al Qaeda dead lying on the ground. But they say they've been told not to bury them.

Now, the local Eastern Alliance commanders are working with the U.S. special forces on the ground. They are providing a type of security on the mountainside. And they say that they have transported in the last few days the last al Qaeda prisoners that they have to Kabul. They say there were 33 of them. They included Chinese, Chechens, Bosnians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Pakistanis as well. They have all now gone today, they say they have no more prisoners here.

Hamid Karzai, the head of Afghanistan's new interim government, says that as far as he can see, terrorism inside Afghanistan is more or less gone, but there is a need for the United States to continue its efforts. And he said there are still at this time pockets of resistance left.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAMID KARZAI, INTERIM AFGHAN GOVERNMENT CHAIRMAN: With regard to Osama bin Laden, I don't know where he is. We received, of course, now and then, that he may be here or there. And if we get a detailed report about his whereabouts, we're certain to go for him too and arrest him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Well, Hamid Karzai has backed the United States' efforts inside the country. There are those inside his government who do resist that, and in the last 24 hours, the Pentagon has now said, despite earlier saying Marines may help U.S. special forces on the ground in Tora Bora, Pentagon now says that Marines are unlikely to assist the U.S. special forces. They will work with the Eastern Alliance fighters in Tora Bora -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Nic, is there any update on the whereabouts of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, who's now on the loose as well?

ROBERTSON: Well, Hamid Karzai says when they know exactly where he is, they will go after him, and they do want to arrest him. However, he is thought to be northwest of Kandahar, about 100, 150 miles in mountains bordering the Helmand and Zabul provinces, the mountains rise up steeply there off the southern Kandahar -- southern Helmand Plains in Afghanistan, and those, again, they're snow-capped peaks like the Tora Bora peaks here. There are thought to be caves up there.

And it's been widely reported from Kandahar, from anti-Taliban forces in Kandahar, that that is likely where Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, is hiding out -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Nic Robertson on the scene in Jalalabad, thank you very much.

And this important note, Nic Robertson will have much more at the top of the hour. And later, at 11:00 p.m. Eastern, in a special reports, "Live From Afghanistan."

What does this new Osama bin Laden videotape tell us? Where could he be now?

Joining me here in the CNN War Room, Samuel Berger, the national security adviser during the Clinton White House, Edward Walker, the president of the Middle East Institute and former U.S. ambassador to both Egypt and Israel, and former U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson, a one-time backer of the anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, now a strong supporter of Pakistan.

You can e-mail your War Room questions to us. Just go to my Web page, cnn.com/wolf, that's also, by the way, where you can read my daily column.

And let me begin with Samuel Berger.

What's your take on this new Osama bin Laden videotape? SAMUEL BERGER, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, I think the phrase the administration used today, "underwhelming," is probably about right. Bin Laden was not able to arouse the Islamic world by the most audacious and venal acts of September 11, and he certainly is not going to be, by virtue of this tape, which may be a month old.

BLITZER: It may be underwhelming, Ambassador Walker, to a U.S. audience, but in certain parts of the Muslim world, the Arab world, there may be a response, especially when the entire 34-minute tape is aired by Al Jazeera.

EDWARD WALKER, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE: Well, we can't tell what's in the rest of the tape, but my sense is from the Arab world that Osama bin Laden is history, and that this is not going to have a significant impact. Basically, he's yesterday's news.

BLITZER: But as far as certain pockets of support that could be vitally critical for him to save his own neck, for example, as well as to engage in additional terrorist acts, you don't need a whole lot of people to do that.

WALKER: Well, you don't need a lot of people. But whether or not they're going to put any loyalty -- give any loyalty to this particular individual is really questionable. I mean, they may still stick with their -- some of their principles and their misguided concepts of how to achieve them, but whether they're going to follow a guy who's failed as badly as Osama bin Laden has failed is really questionable.

BLITZER: Charlie Wilson, you've spent a lot of time in that part of the world. You know the people there. How is it going to be received once that entire videotape is aired, assuming it's just more of the same, a lot of rhetoric that the United States, part of the crusader campaign against Islam?

CHARLIE WILSON, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Well, I agree with the ambassador -- the former ambassador and the former national security adviser. It is underwhelming, immensely underwhelming. And I would just observe that the only people, the only people -- you're talking about a core of people of a certain persuasion that this might convince or might influence, the only people that will give this any credence at all are already people that are so far over on the other side that it really doesn't make any difference.

Those are people that wouldn't believe, wouldn't believe he was dead if you brought him their head. I mean, they're fanatics, and they've got their minds made up, and they're unpersuadable by either side, anybody that would give us this any credibility.

BERGER: I do think, though, Wolf, that while we've succeeded, obviously, in dislodging and destroying the Taliban leadership and, I think, disrupting al Qaeda, it is important, I believe, for us to find bin Laden, dead or alive. We learned in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was standing, and that has bedeviled us for a decade. And I think we need to stay where we are, what we're doing, until we definitively establish that bin Laden is either captured or dead.

WALKER: Sandy, I'd go even further. I'd say that we have to get at the roots of the al Qaeda organization, wherever it is...

BERGER: Of course.

WALKER: ... around the world. I mean, you know, just because you don't have the head doesn't mean you don't have all these roots, which can create enormous problems for us.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: ... you talk about the roots. Where are those roots right now?

WALKER: Well, those roots are in many different countries. These are small cells of active terrorists who pose a continuing threat to us.

BLITZER: Including here in the United States.

WALKER: Including here in the United States.

BERGER: And have a capacity to reconstitute...

(CROSSTALK)

BERGER: ... themselves...

WALKER: Exactly.

BERGER: ... and I think that's why symbolically as well as -- if bin Laden -- if there's a mystery about bin Laden for the next 10 years, he becomes the sort of the Pollard of international terrorism, and I think we have to put an end to that.

BLITZER: Is it your sense -- you know Pakistan quite well, Charlie Wilson -- that if in fact he did manage to get from Tora Bora into Pakistan, that there are certain pockets within Pakistan that the government of President Musharraf doesn't necessarily have complete control, where he does have some sympathizers, Osama bin Laden, who could protect him there?

WILSON: In the northwest frontier, there are places called the tribal areas, and the tribal areas are not really under control of the government of Pakistan. When you -- when a visitor goes from, say, Peshawar into the tribal areas, they trade off on...

BLITZER: This is the wild West.

WILSON: That's the wild -- I mean, it is a really wild West. It's little boy heaven, I used to call it, because everybody's shooting off guns in the air all the time.

So there are places. But there is almost no place -- $25 million goes an awful long way in the tribal areas of the northwest frontier. BLITZER: So your gut tells you that...

WILSON: My gut...

BLITZER: ... if he's still alive, he's still in Afghanistan.

WILSON: My gut tells me he's in Afghanistan. If he's in Pakistan, he's not going to last very long, because somebody other than the religious fanatics are going to find out about it.

BLITZER: Do you agree with him?

WALKER: I agree with him. I think he's really run his course. And he may run for a bit, but he will ultimately be caught. And I agree with Sandy too, it's important that we do that.

WILSON: I'd also like to point out one thing about those caves, and that is that no military commander ever thinks that he's going to be forced to abandon his headquarters in -- General MacArthur never thought he was going to have to abandon Manila. He -- you know, he was going to stay on the top floor of the Manila Hotel, and he ended up in Bataan without any -- without enough quinine, without enough water, without enough food, and without enough ammunition.

These caves are cold. They are high up. To simply carry enough fuel and ammunition up those mountains where donkeys can't even go is just out of the question. So those caves are going to be emptied out in the winter.

BLITZER: So people...

WILSON: Very, very soon, probably already.

BLITZER: Samuel Berger, some people who watched the latest Osama bin Laden videotape, five minutes of which aired on Al Jazeera today, noticed something very specific. In fact, one of our viewers just e- mailed us this question, Bob from Ontario, California, "It seems Osama bin Laden is in pain. Might he be missing his left arm or hand?"

BERGER: Well, I...

BLITZER: Because he is a lefty, and as he was moving his right hand, he wasn't moving -- you didn't see any movement on the left side.

BERGER: I'm sure there are lots of analysts across the river who are looking at that film very, very carefully. He does look to me, just from looking at this, worse for wear over the last two months. But he's also -- this is a bit of an act of defiance in issuing this tape, basically saying, you know, I'm still here, even if it's only on videotape.

BLITZER: You heard him make the case that he's trying to fight for the Palestinian cause against Israel. That does resonate in certain -- in large chunks of the Arab world, the Muslim world. WALKER: Maybe if he'd been consistent over the years in saying that, but I don't think he ever said it before September 11. That certainly calls into question his commitment.

BLITZER: He's a newcomer to that cause.

WALKER: He's a total newcomer.

BLITZER: The other point that some people had made earlier, your successor at the National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice, urged U.S. television networks early on, when the first Osama bin Laden tapes came out, not to air these because he might be supposedly sending a signal to some sleeper cells out there. Is that a concern that we should have as we watch this latest videotape?

BERGER: Well, I think that the networks and the news outlets have been more cautious and more careful than in the early days, when this was being put on the air almost in real time. It's a concern, although I don't think it's possible to totally black it out.

BLITZER: You have a concern along those lines, Congressman Wilson?

WILSON: I agree with Sandy. I think it's possible, very minor concern, but certainly nothing that you can block out.

But I would like to just put one little thought in here different from what's -- what Sandy said. And that is that I don't think it's the end of the world if we don't find Osama bin Laden. I don't think it's the end of the world if he's dead in a cave and he doesn't get located.

I think that's about -- of course, you don't want these tapes to keep coming up that obviously are made within the last month, but they'll stop if he is dead in one of the caves...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: ... I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you, especially on this panel.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But we're going to hold that thought. Congressman Wilson, everybody stand by. When we come back, we'll pick up where Congressman Wilson left off.

Also, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, does he exist only on videotape?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to the CNN War Room.

The latest videotape is apparently a few weeks old. But is Osama bin Laden still alive? If so, where is he? We're going to get to that in a second.

Sandy Berger, you just heard Congressman Wilson say it may not necessarily be all that important to find Osama bin Laden.

BERGER: Well, I think we've done enormous damage to al Qaeda, we've disrupted it. He's down, but we need him out. We don't need a glorified, mystified, mythic bin Laden over the next years who has defied all the power of the United States, and he's either disappeared or has actually survived and becomes a rallying point for having to fight American power.

We've done a great deal of damage, but we have to stay with this until we find out where this guy is.

BLITZER: Finish the job.

WILSON: Of course. And, of course, that would be the vast majority of opinion. But I still would like to throw out the idea, and I will defend it to some degree, that this is not like Saddam Hussein, this is not a guy that's got his finger in his eye every day on television when you watch it.

The -- in fact, we're -- we've seen that the tape that they released, and we're all underwhelmed by it, we say it doesn't mean anything to anybody except the fanatics that are going to be there anyway.

And I think there's something to be said for the idea of a disappearance of bin Laden, where it wasn't the Americans that actually held a gun to his head. And it's certainly the last thing we want is to capture bin Laden.

WALKER: Well, now, look, I'm really nervous about having a mystery out there about this guy. I think you turn him into a potential martyr, particularly in some of the Islamic countries...

WILSON: But is -- isn't he a martyr if we capture him and bring him and bring him to Brussels, or a martyr if we shoot him?

BERGER: A dead martyr is better than a live martyr.

WALKER: That's right, or if you put him in jail, look, these guys disappear...

WILSON: If we put him in jail, they'll take hostages of Americans all over the world.

BLITZER: All right, let's go to the map. I want to show our viewers a map of the region, and we'll put it up here in our Telestrator. Take a look over here, Afghanistan right over here. But there are a lot of places, especially since he has money, he's got boats at his disposal, he could get out in the Arabian Sea, there's -- take a look at Somalia, look at this coastline.

This is a country, Somalia, as Sandy Berger, as you well know, doesn't even have a government right now, and there is a history of support for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden there.

BERGER: I think all of those scenarios are possible, Wolf, although I think if he goes to Pakistan, I do think the Pakistani government will eventually find him. I think that while Somalia is anarchistic, it also doesn't have the infrastructure that he has in Afghanistan of caves and the kind of topography that Afghanistan has.

So each of these presents its own challenge to bin Laden. Somalia has no government, but it also doesn't have the kind of sympathetic geographic and population group that Afghanistan has.

BLITZER: So even if he...

WILSON: Also, anywhere he turns up, we're going to go after him. I mean, understand that.

WALKER: Yes, and he may not have the ability to put a lot of money into somebody's coffers to buy their support.

BLITZER: He -- in other words, because of the freezing of the assets...

WALKER: Freezing the assets and the constant effort to track the money.

BLITZER: Very, very quickly, I'll go round one time, is the U.S. going to find Osama bin Laden any time soon?

WALKER: Yes, I think they are.

WILSON: Yes.

BIN LADEN: Yes, I believe we both will and must.

BLITZER: OK, Congressman Wilson, Sandy Berger, Ed Walker, thanks for joining us.

And a connection between the only person indicted in the September 11 and the man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines flight over the weekend. Details when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Here are some of the latest developments we're following.

A new videotaped statement by Osama bin Laden has emerged. In it, he lashes out at the United States and calls the September 11 attacks "blessed terror."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIN LADEN (through translator): After three months since the attacks, the blessed attacks against -- that took place against the head of the snake, the United States, and after two months since the crusader campaign started against Islam, we would like to speak on some of the implications of those incidents.

When they condemn terror, we say our terror against America is blessed terror, in order to put an end to suppression, in order for the United States to stop its support to Israel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And a connection has emerged between Richard Reid, accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines flight Saturday, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who's charged in the September 11 attacks. The head of this London mosque confirms both worshiped there and indeed may have known each other.

Iraqi military officials claim one of their missiles hit a coalition aircraft over southern Iraq earlier today. They say the plane continued flying towards Saudi Arabia, but both U.S. and British defense officials say none of their planes was involved in any such incident.

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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