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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Military Aircraft Crashes in Pakistan; U.S. Prepares Prisoners' Relocation to Cuba

Aired January 09, 2002 - 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight on WOLF BLITZER REPORTS, THE WAR ROOM: The U.S. pays a higher price in the war on terrorism, as a military aircraft crashes in Pakistan.

Handle with care. The U.S. prepares to relocate dangerous prisoners from Afghanistan to the Caribbean, as the hunt goes on for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. What's next on the U.S. hit list?

We'll go live to Afghanistan, and to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and I'll speak with representative Porter Goss, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman, former ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley, and Paul Bremer, former U.S. ambassador for counterterrorism, as we go into THE WAR ROOM.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

BLITZER: Good evening, I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Washington. We'll get to our war room panel in a moment. But first, we begin tonight with a developing story we're covering: the tragic crash of a U.S. military plane in Pakistan. The Marine Corps KC-130 refueling tanker slammed into a mountain west of Quetta, near the Afghan border.

Our Bill Hemmer joins us now live from Kandahar. He has details and the latest -- Bill.

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, good morning from Kandahar. The indications we're getting through the military do not appear to be good or promising.

As you mentioned, seven Marines -- six crew members and one passenger on board a KC-130 trying to land at one of the three U.S. forward bases there in Pakistan, the one known as Shamsi. This is southwest of the town of Quetta, just across the border from Afghanistan. Again, the indications we get right now are that there are no survivors.

Eyewitnesses in the area say the plane was on fire when it slammed into a mountainside. This is rough and tough. We're told a search-and-rescue team has been sent out. It's quite likely they reached there hours ago. But again, it is tough going right there in this part of Pakistan and there's no telling right now what investigators on the ground may have found there.

As one can imagine here, when this news struck the base here it took everybody back. No one likes to lose men or women on this current operation.

In the meantime, Wolf, I want to talk about Kandahar. There are seven high-ranking Taliban government officials, we are told, who earlier this week had turned themselves in to local authorities. We're now told that all seven were let go on their own. It appears to be the Afghan way, once again, of turning in and talking in.

But now we understand that all seven may have left the country. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) talked with military officials here on Thursday about the matter, they seemed to think it was a local issue handled at the local level.

But there now appears to be a growing concern for who is allowed to go free and who is not, who is to be questioned and who is not by the U.S. authorities. That's the update on Kandahar.

Another update on the detainees, Wolf. At this time, it's our understanding that no detainees left here last night for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And then on Monday night, we were told through sources that a flight was scheduled. It was canceled. Same situation on Tuesday night. The problem apparently is Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On another front now, there is new videotape we took for our CNN crew last night -- late last night here in Kandahar. Although no new detainees went out, some did come back in here. We counted at least 18 new arrivals here last night at the detention facility.

And we know the greater area, the larger area of that facility was cleaned up and cleared out on Wednesday afternoon. Sources with the Army say they are anticipating the arrival of more. And indeed, that happened last night. The running total right now appears to be right around 325 at the facility here in Kandahar -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Bill, you've got still a lot of Marines over there in Kandahar, although most of them are getting ready to move out, army troops coming in. But this crash of this KC-130 with Marines onboard, how is that affecting morale where you are?

HEMMER: I can tell you, Wolf, when we went to bed late last night we could see it clearly on the faces, the expressions of the Marines who we were around last evening. This is tough news anytime you get a crash like this. And certainly these are tough men, too, but they are human as well.

I can say, though, with regard to flight operations nothing changed, Wolf. The cargo planes kept coming and kept landing and kept leaving again. The operation apparently did not miss a beat here in Kandahar last night -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Bill Hemmer in Kandahar. And this important note: please join Bill live at top of the hour "LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN" with much more on all of these developments.

And in that small patch of Cuba, leased by the United States, military personnel are getting ready to receive the al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. Our national correspondent Bob Franken is already there and he joins us now live via videophone from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Give us a scene setter, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you can probably hear the airplanes in the background. We are at the airport here on Guantanamo. Planes will be coming in -- in and out, day and night, bringing in various military people. There are going to be probably a couple thousand added security forces who are coming in for this new mission on Guantanamo Bay, which currently is in the news and then it's out of the news.

It's been somewhat sleepy in the last few years. But of course it's now going to be the location where the most dangerous of the detainees, the al Qaeda and Taliban forces who have been captured in Afghanistan are going to be put. We're told that up to 100 of them could be returned here in the next days.

They've been working furiously to get this particular camp, to be a temporary camp ready for them. Incredibly strict security. We were given a very, very pale guided tour by the military, but (UNINTELLIGIBLE). What we saw was camp x-rays (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has now been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) high, high security facility.

Lots of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wire and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) these Taliban and al Qaeda fighters will be detained. They're going to be kept in incredibly strict conditions (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in open cells. (UNINTELLIGIBLE). It will be small cubicles that will be surrounded entirely by chain link fence. No protection from the elements. One of the people we (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to said, "if it rains they get wet." It's going to be extremely heavy security. No (UNINTELLIGIBLE) facilities set up (AUDIO GAP).

BLITZER: Bob Franken reporting live from Guantanamo, trying to speak above the noise of planes landing at the Guantanamo U.S. Naval facility in Cuba.

And speaking at his first political fund-raiser since the September 11 attacks -- a money fundraiser for his brother -- the Florida -- Florida Governor Jeb Bush, President Bush just a short while ago pledged to keep up the pressure on the terrorists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Those who struck America think they can run and hide. That's interesting. I find it amazing that the al Qaeda leaders are more than willing to convince some of their brethren to commit suicide yet they themselves hide in caves.

We are in the first theater. But wherever terror exists this great nation will hunt it down. It's the calling of our time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The president notes that the war is entering a new, dangerous phase, but says Americans are patient and will indeed see it through.

And what will the United States do with all the Taliban and al Qaeda detainees it's collecting? How far will it go in tracking down their leaders?

Joining me now here in the CNN war room: Robert Oakley. He's a former United States ambassador to Pakistan and Somalia. He also headed the State Department's counterterrorism office. Paul Bremer. He's chairman of Marsh Crisis Consulting. He's a former U.S. ambassador at large for counterterrorism. And Congressman Porter Goss. He's chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He also is a former CIA officer.

Remember you can e-mail me your war room questions. Just go to my web page, cnn.com/wolf. That's also where you can read my daily online column.

And Mr. Chairman, the president says the U.S. is going to hunt down terrorists wherever they may be. Where are they right now?

REP. PORTER GOSS (R), FLORIDA: Well, I think it's very important that the president has been consistent and clear on his message. This is about wiping out the international global terrorist network. And that's what we're doing.

It is not so important to catch one. It's important to get rid of all of the network. So I think that we will eventually get to bin Laden and all of his other lieutenants. And there's lot of speculation about who will pop up if bin Laden is knocked off or taken out of action.

He's not actually a great tactical battlefield commander or anything. He's more symbolic at this point, I suspect, for the curiously misguided interpretation he's given to the great religion of Islam and how he has hijacked and used it for horrible purposes.

So I would suggest that we are on mission. Our intelligence people are getting really a motherlode of information, which we are going to mine in the days, months and years ahead and we will complete the mission. I think the president is exactly right. It'll take time. We must be patient. I think we're off to a great start.

BLITZER: What about this mission, Ambassador Oakley? What's next as far as the -- the next steps? Beyond, let's say, Afghanistan.

ROBERT OAKLEY, FORMER U.S. AMABASSADOR TO PAKISTAN: Well, a lot of the steps beyond Afghanistan are ongoing right now. As you can see, our European allies are rounding up people in Europe. There are people being rounded up in Southeast Asia, Singapore, Malaysia.

The Taliban, as we know, has networks and cells all over the world. And as Chairman Goss was saying, you've got to get all of them. You can't settle for some of them.

BLITZER: Including here in the United States.

OAKLEY: Of course, of course. Including here in the United States. There may be more. There may be in Canada, there may be in Mexico, there may be in South America, where there are a number of Islamic areas and population. So we just have to keep working. And the intelligence leads, as you say, will -- will -- are going to lead to another and we'll keep on pushing.

BLITZER: You may have seen that interview yesterday in "the New York Times," Ambassador Bremer. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, outlining some potential targets including Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines.

The "New York Times" in an editorial today reacted to that by writing this. "It is one thing to raise an alarm about terrorism in distant places and quite another to present detailed evidence and a military plan that makes sense. Paul Wolfowitz and his colleagues have yet to meet the latter test."

PAUL BREMER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM: Look, the president is running the foreign policy, not anybody else. And the president -- as the chairman put it -- has been absolutely clear from September 20 when he addressed the nation and said, states which support terrorism will be considered hostile regimes.

And some of those ones that Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz mentioned, for example Sudan and Somalia, are states that support terrorism. There is apparently a very active diplomacy now going on by the State Department with both of those countries to persuade them to stop it before we have to take military action there.

BLITZER: How much interest are you showing to the movement of these prisoners to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? You represent a district in Florida that's not all that far away.

GOSS: Well, I've been to Guantanamo a couple of times. Once it was Cuban rafters and another time Haitian people trying to escape the misery and the economy in Haiti. And now we have yet another group. I think this is by far the most dangerous group.

I'm sorry I couldn't hear all of the -- the things that Bob was telling us down there over the airplane engines, but indeed that's not a situation that can last forever. I hope there are some intelligence opportunities there.

But I think it's a very good judgment to put these folks there. I think it sends a message that this is what happens to you. You'll be treated humanely but it's -- it's not exactly paradise.

BLITZER: Let me follow up with this question from Clyde. He e- mailed us this from Cleveland, Ohio: "What is the long-term plan for keeping Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners under U.S. control?"

GOSS: Well, I -- I hope that we are not going to have a colony of prisoners forever. I hope that there will be some useful purpose for some of these people who see the light. And that in fact is what's going on Afghanistan right now.

Those judgments are being made every day. Not always to our satisfaction, I will say, about who is a trustworthy Afghanistani and to carry on in their country and the evolution of that country. Those decisions, as we know, are happening.

The question of the non-Afghanistani fighters and how you'll separate the people who are not hard-core terrorists out, those people need to be taken out of society and will be done, I think. We'll have a system that is working and I think will work better as go along.

GOSS: I think the hardest part of that for us is going to be not the folks in Guantanamo, but the sleepers in the United States who have not yet broken a law but who have mischief in their heart and want to do harm. How do we in the United States go about dealing with that and using our law enforcement capabilities? Because as you know, we don't do intelligence in this country.

BLITZER: Ambassador Oakley, as we're looking on our screen at some live pictures of the detainees in Kandahar, they're getting ready to be moved -- some of them, at least -- to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

But you heard Bill Hemmer report just a few minutes ago that the ways of that part of the world, that some of our supposed allies over there, the warlords, are making deals and releasing some of these people.

OAKLEY: Wolf, working with them is much better than trying to occupy the country the way the Soviets did. And they paid a huge price for it. They had to go back home with their tail between their legs.

We've conducted the campaign in Afghanistan brilliantly, so far as I'm concerned, but not getting too deep, working with them. It's their country. They'll have to live with. I think it will work out all right.

BLITZER: Here's a question. Ross from Spokane, Washington wants to know: "Will the Department of Defense bring charges against the renegade warlords who allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda leaders to escape in exchange for bribes and power?"

BREMER: Let's -- let's start by admitting we don't really know all of the stories of what happened with these fellows who were released. Let's -- let's let the officials in the Pentagon come to whatever conclusions they come to.

I don't think they're likely to bring charges against people. There may be some rather robust discussions, let's say, if we think they shouldn't have been let loose.

But as Ambassador Oakley points out, the history in Afghanistan is there's a lot of -- this is the way the Afghan tribal system had worked for a long, long time. We're not going to try to change the way the Afghan culture is, nor can we change Afghan history. I agree with Ambassador Oakley. I think we've conducted this campaign very, very well.

BLITZER: You've got to work with what you got and that's what we got, I guess. Mr. Chairman, you -- you hinted before there is a bonanza, potentially, of intelligence information coming out of the area, specifically some of detainees. Give us some specifics, if you can. What kind of information -- without, you know, breaking any classified rules -- what kind of information the United States is getting.

GOSS: Well, Wolf, the first job, as you very well know, is any further threats. And without being specific there is still an escalation of threat warning out there. We are definitely aware that bad things can still happen.

I am not saying that the network is intact or anything else like that, or we have any specifics. But I do know that we are getting enough from all of our sources and methods that say that still there are people who harbor bad thoughts and want to take bad actions against Americans at home and abroad. So we have to keep our -- our guard up, well up. That's the most important job.

Now, most of our intelligence is focused on that. The second part is wrapping up the perpetrators, taking out the international network as we can. And as both ambassadors have clearly said, this is global. This is worldwide. It's not a nice neat table of organization we are dealing with. It's somewhat amorphous. It's people who want to associate. And you'll probably get copycat irrational people who will do irrational things.

BLITZER: All right. Stand by. We're going to take a quick break. We have a lot more to talk about. When we come back, he's a mysterious al Qaeda leader with a long list of aliases, and U.S. authorities want him presumably almost as much as they want Osama bin Laden. We'll find out who he is when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to the CNN war room. He travels in disguise. His very identity is open to question. But he's key al Qaeda leader and U.S. officials want to get their hands on him. We're talking, Ambassador Bremer, about this man named Abu Zubaida (ph), a Palestinian, presumably, who's really in charge of the execution of a lot of this al Qaeda terrorism.

OAKLEY: He seems to be one of top four guys in al Qaeda. I think he's not really the number two. But he does have a lot of authority because he's the guy who saw all of the terrorists in and out of the camps. So he knows where the guys are and where they went home to and what their aliases were. He moves around himself rather easily. He may or may not still be in Afghanistan.

He's important. But you know, Wolf, it's important not to get too personality driven here. It's an American tendency. What we've got to do is focus on what the chairman said earlier. We've got to take apart this whole organization and other organizations that conduct terrorist attacks and kill Americans.

BLITZER: OK. Ambassador Oakley, we got an e-mail that you could answer because you're a former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia. You know that region quite well. Jason in Trenton, Michigan. "If the United States were to increase its efforts to find Osama bin Laden or other al Qaeda members in Somalia, what response could we expect to see from the Somalian government?"

OAKLEY: There is no Somalian government, except nominally. You've got eight or ten different factions or warlords, each one of whom controls a chunk of territory. And each one will tell you that the other guy has all these radicals and all the al Qaeda people over there, so wipe them out and we'll all be happy.

BLITZER: At least, are there al Qaeda types in Somalia as far as we know?

OAKLEY: There probably are. I would doubt that -- well, who knows whether any serious leaders have slipped into Somalia. There could be. But just like in Yemen and other places, there are a lot of people who have drifted in there because there's no government to block them.

BLITZER: It's a mess over there in Somalia, to put it mildly. It's also a mess, though, the tensions between India and Pakistan, although some would say the temperature has gone down little bit in the last few days.

GOSS: Wolf, I would say that of all things on the plate in the national security facing the United States of America, that is probably the most dangerous, the Pakistan-India situation because of the potential for a nuclear flare-up on that.

The ambassador here, I'm sure, can show more wisdom on it than I. But my original absorption of attention on that area, and my visit there in August, was dealing with the Kashmir problem, which I rate as a much more serious problem than I rated the problem on the western boundary in Afghanistan, which shows how uninformed you can be.

But I still feel that that problem itself as a world problem deserves our attention, and I'm delighted to hear that Secretary Powell is going to make a trip. My concern is that we've got a state of readiness that we haven't seen and any little thing can trigger it. And the second concern I have is that we don't have the necessary (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of communications to let the pressure off in a face- saving way.

BLITZER: You're a former ambassador to Pakistan. They have nuclear weapons, the Indians do. But do they have them ready to -- operationally ready to go?

OAKLEY: I'm sure on the Pakistani side they have nuclear warheads sitting on ballistic missiles that are ready to go and on the Indian side they have airplanes that can carry nuclear weapons that are ready to go.

But the last thing in the world any -- any government wants to do -- including those two -- is to use nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis would do it if they felt their country was going to be dismembered.

The really scary thing, as the chairman said, is there are groups out there -- including these fanatic Islamic groups, the jihadists, who the government of Pakistan is now trying to deal with -- they've had to reverse course there as they've had to do on the other side.

They supported these groups. They've become rogue elephants, just as the Israelis started of supporting Hamas and the Indians started out supported the Tamil Tigers, who assassinated the Indian prime minister. These things can turn on you, and Musharraf is doing his damnedest to get control of it, but it's not easy.

BLITZER: Do you agree?

BREMER: I do agree with the threat. And there's another danger here, which is that that part of al Qaeda which is left intact has a very high incentive to get the Pakistanis focusing to their east and not to their west.

So there's another group of people out there, in addition to all the renegades that Ambassador Oakley mentioned, there is real incentive for what's left of the Taliban and al Qaeda to try to get the focus on the Pakistani eastern frontier rather than on the western frontier, so that the western frontier becomes more porous for them to get out.

BLITZER: We only have a second. Any new word where Osama bin Laden might be?

GOSS: No, but I'd like to talk to your friend Abu Zubaida (ph) and ask him. I think the value of some of these players as individuals is given a chance to talk to them, and boy, would I like to have that chance.

BLITZER: You might have that chance. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and our two ambassadors. Thanks for joining us here in the CNN war room.

And the seizure of a small arsenal. Did these weapons pose a threat to workers at a sensitive location? We'll be back in just a moment with a quick check of the latest developments. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. Here are the latest developments at this hour. Southern California police seized a small arsenal of weapons from the home of a fired nuclear power plant maintenance worker.

The man was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill his co- workers. Police found about 250 weapons, including assault rifles, and thousands of rounds of ammunition at the man's home and in a storage locker. A new Justice Department report says international passenger areas at major United States airports are so poorly designed that illegal passengers or contraband items can easily slip in. The report blames inadequate oversight by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, saying the INS has failed to make sure airlines comply with safety and inspection requirements.

And finally tonight, you're in good company in finding our war room program a nightly necessity. For the February issue of "Vanity Fair," the magazine's famed photographer Annie Liebowitz was granted access to all the top Bush administration figures as they fight the war on terrorism.

Take a look at this picture she captured. She captured an image that Karl Rove, Karen Hughes -- look what they're watching on the screen in their room. Top White House advisers during a meeting only last month. You're in good company.

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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