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National Public Radio (NPR) September 5, 2002 Thursday

 

Copyright 2002 National Public Radio (R).

 

SHOW: Talk of the Nation (2:00 PM ET) - NPR

 

September 5, 2002 Thursday

 

LENGTH: 8294 words

 

HEADLINE: Update on al-Qaeda

 

ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN

 

REPORTERS: MICHAEL SULLIVAN

 

BODY:

NEAL CONAN, host:

 

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

 

While Iraq dominates the talk in Washington, there were bloody reminders from Afghanistan today that the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban is far from over. A car bomb in Kabul killed more than 15 people. Witnesses said there was a smaller explosion first, designed to draw a crowd, before a taxicab blew up in front of a television store.

 

Even more ominous was an apparent attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai when he was visiting the governor of Kandahar. NPR's Michael Sullivan is in Kabul covering the story, and Michael joins us now.

 

Michael, thanks very much for being with us.

 

MICHAEL SULLIVAN reporting:

 

Pleasure, Neal.

 

CONAN: Let us start with the attack on President Karzai in Kandahar. First of all, what do you know about what happened, and what's his condition?

 

SULLIVAN: Well, the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said tonight that President Karzai is safe and he is unhurt following today's assassination attempt. The attempt occurred in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual headquarters of the defeated Taliban, whose government Karzai's interim administration replaced. Karzai, the foreign minister said, was in Kandahar for the wedding of his brother, and he was getting into his car. He was going toward a nearby shrine when an armed, uniformed man, Abdullah said, opened fire just in front of the car, and a bodyguard of the president opened fire on the assassin. That bodyguard was killed. Two or three other people were wounded as well. The assassin, as I said, was killed.

 

The governor of Kandahar Province, Gul Agha Shirzai, was slightly wounded in the exchange of fire between the attacker and Karzai's bodyguards, who included US Special Forces. It's not clear if any of the Special Forces were among the wounded.

 

CONAN: Who are the suspects in this attack, according to the foreign minister?

 

SULLIVAN: Well, according to the foreign minister, the suspects in this attack--no big surprise there--are al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and his Taliban allies, and the foreign minister also said that the attack in Kandahar, the assassination attempt, and today's bomb blast in Kabul were probably related and that they were probably carried out by the same people, and those people, of course, would be Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

CONAN: Well, tell us a little bit more about the car bomb explosion in Kabul. Is the report accurate--there was a smaller explosion first, and then a big blast after a crowd gathered?

 

SULLIVAN: Yeah, that's exactly right. It definitely looks at this point as if the smaller explosion was planned to draw the attention of more people so more people would be there for the second, larger blast. And the foreign minister said tonight that 10 people are known to be dead following that explosion. Dozens more are wounded and it really was a horrific scene down there. There were mangled wrecks of cars, there were bits and pieces of people's clothing and there was just shattered glass everywhere.

 

I went to one of the nearby hospitals where many of the wounded were taken. Thirty wounded were taken to that hospital, many of them very critically wounded, and the doctors said that some of those were moved to other hospitals. And there's about six who are left who are still critically wounded, and a few of them aren't expected to make it.

 

CONAN: Was there a target, or was this just a car bomb?

 

SULLIVAN: Probably both. I mean, I think in the past several weeks here--in the past several months here, there's been a series of small bombings in the capital, but those bombings have been what some of the international security force here have characterized as 'nuisance' bombings. There hasn't really been any serious injury, and there hasn't really been any damage to property. But the way this one went down today, it's fairly clear that both were intended here--damage and serious loss of life, and they seem to have achieved those goals.

 

CONAN: But the car bomb did not go off in front of a government building or anything like that?

 

SULLIVAN: No. It went off in a crowded market, one of the most crowded markets in the capital, in the center of the city. Now that market is fairly close--it's just probably 50 or 60 yards away from the Ministry of Information, but it doesn't appear to have been the target.

 

CONAN: NPR's Michael Sullivan. Thanks very much for joining us.

 

SULLIVAN: You're welcome, Neal.

 

CONAN: Michael Sullivan speaking with us on the line from Kabul, Afghanistan.

 

In the year since the atrocities of September the 11th, we have heard a great deal about al-Qaeda and its leadership, but in some ways this secretive terror network remains obscure, and almost every observer is convinced that it continues to be extremely dangerous. Al-Qaeda is our topic this hour. What do you want to know about al-Qaeda, recruitment, operations, finance, propaganda? How and why did Western intelligence agencies underestimate the threat? What's been accomplished in the war on terrorism, and what hasn't?

 

Our telephone number in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

 

Joining us now is Jane Corbin. As a reporter for the BBC television program "Panorama," she's focused on al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups for the past several years. She's the author of the newly published book, "Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network that Threatens the World." And Jane Corbin joins us now from our bureau in New York.

 

And welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.

 

Ms. JANE CORBIN (Author, "Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network that Threatens the World"): Thank you very much, Neal.

 

CONAN: What do you make of today's bombings in Afghanistan and the assassination attempt? It certainly bears all the earmarks of al-Qaeda.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes, and certainly it bears the hallmarks of their destabilization efforts in Afghanistan. I mean, the war on terror has focused on Afghanistan. It's had al-Qaeda as its target. It's had some success in routing them, and driving their fighters from the region. But al-Qaeda have sworn to stay dug in there, and to try to destabilize the government in the hope that they could reestablish their base in Afghanistan, which has traditionally always been the country that they have relied on, particularly during the years when the Taliban was in power. And I think the fact that a car bomb was involved in Kabul is again a hallmark of al-Qaeda. We've seen similar attacks in recent months in Pakistan, which the authorities there have laid at the door of al-Qaeda, and which European and American intelligence agencies do believe show the involvement of al-Qaeda.

 

This is one of their specialities, car bombs and truck bombs, so I was interested to hear Mike describe the kind of bombing that we had there, which was a kind of warning signal which perhaps attracted people to the scene, and then a massive car bomb going up. It certainly seems to me to be very likely that al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda elements were involved in it.

 

CONAN: Do we have any reliable way to know how many al-Qaeda members might still be active in and around Afghanistan?

 

Ms. CORBIN: No. The American forces, the coalition forces there who were successful, to a certain extent, in the spring in Operation Anaconda, in fighting al-Qaeda in the south and the east, and killing large numbers of them, have always claimed that 500 or even 800 al-Qaeda fighters died as a result of those operations. I'm more skeptical. I mean, having visited those areas with some of the local Afghans who are now in control, they're fighters who know the districts extremely well, and know those very tortuous and difficult mountain passes, are of the opinion that only a couple of hundred, at most, were killed. The others have lived to fight another day.

 

They've fled over the border area into, if you like, the badlands of the Pakistani tribal areas, which are very, very difficult to know what's going on in, and that--they continue to infiltrate back into Afghanistan in an area which, after all, has no real border. I mean, there is no demarcation line, there are no patrols, there are no guards. It's very easy for people to wander over and back, and to seek refuge in tribal districts which have always historically been very sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

 

CONAN: Our telephone number again is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. and our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

 

Our first caller is Erin, who joins us from Los Gatos, California.

 

ERIN (Caller): Yes. Hi. Good morning, Neal.

 

CONAN: Good morning.

 

ERIN: ...(Unintelligible) show. Thanks so much. I have a couple of comments. First of all, in the last year we've all been made aware of a lot of red flags that should have, obviously, been picked up by our intelligence and/or military that something was amiss. You know, we all can look back now and say something should have been done. What can we do, or are there any plans on closing those holes so these things don't fall through?

 

And the second question has to do with Pakistan. I'm confused as to why we're so allied with them when all facts show that the mullahs are in Pakistan, there's training camps in Pakistan; there has been massive support in the country of terrorist groups throughout, you know, the region.

 

CONAN: When you said close the holes for al-Qaeda, you mean the intelligence holes rather than...

 

ERIN: Right. The intelligence holes.

 

CONAN: OK.

 

ERIN: The things that we should have seen and either ignored or didn't take seriously. I don't really know what it was, and I'm very curious as to have there been any steps to changing that, maybe taking things more seriously, but also, the question on Pakistan...

 

CONAN: Well, let's get to them. Jane Corbin?

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes. Well, shall we take the Pakistan question first, Erin? I mean, I think it's a question for the US, you know, why you ally--why you, and indeed, Britain and other countries--why allied with Pakistan? I think it's a fear of what could happen if America didn't get behind President Musharraf, who I think is seen as, if you like, a bulwark against a continuing slide towards anarchy and extremism in Pakistan.

 

I mean, yes, there are these extreme forces, and America has chosen to back President Musharraf as some kind of effort to stall them, and I think the worry about Pakistan is that obviously it has nuclear weapons, and it's in the cockpit of a very unstable area. Huge problems with India, a long-running war and dispute over Kashmir. And I think it's a question of what else can we do? Because if America doesn't stand firm behind Musharraf, and if he is toppled, who knows who will come to power there, because there are very strong Islamic elements that are allied to al-Qaeda, and you know, we might see another Afghan situation developing, when a government like the Taliban came to power.

 

CONAN: A government that would then have nuclear weapons.

 

Ms. CORBIN: A government that would have nuclear weapons and a government, you know, in a hot dispute with its neighbor over Kashmir; I mean, a very, very dangerous situation.

 

ERIN: Why isn't...

 

Ms. CORBIN: On the...

 

ERIN: I'm sorry.

 

CONAN: Go a...

 

ERIN: That's one of my concerns is--as you're saying, right now Musharraf is our best bet to back, but he's not supported popularly by his countrymen, and if he goes away, I think we're going to--it's kind of like we're breeding a bigger problem by supporting almost a terrorist in his own right. He was the mastermind of the Kargil invasion, which, you know, bordered on terrorism. It was just militarized.

 

CONAN: Yeah.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes.

 

CONAN: Getting to Erin's other question, you wrote in the introduction to your book that it's also about the West's response to the threat of al-Qaeda over the last 15 years. You describe it as a 'tale of weakness and exploitation, a failure of imagination.'

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes, I think that's key. It was a failure of imagination. I mean, our intelligence agencies' job is to think outside the box, if you like, to put together all the facts that people, you know, never think could happen, and to create a scenario and to perhaps work towards preventing that. And there clues. There were certainly intelligence reports around when I started work on al-Qaeda in 1997, that indicated that in the Far East at least, intelligence agencies knew that individuals who were pilots planned, or dreamed, if you like, of flying their planes into American government buildings, into the CIA headquarters, for example. So there certainly were clues there, but nobody seemed to have the will or the imagination to put it all together.

 

So having said that, I think in fairness to the intelligence agencies, it's one thing to know what might be planned, and it's another to actually stop it on September the 11th in a particular American city or American airport, and I think that that is the problem. You know, intelligence can never be a complete picture. You put together various bits of information and you come up with something. But I certainly think there were lapses in the FBI, in the CIA and not only in America but amongst European intelligence agencies. There's been criticisms of Germany, of Britain, of France and of Holland as well.

 

But somehow, I think people felt that bin Laden was a bit crazy. He was a man who lived in the Middle East, in the fastness of Afghanistan. He had all sorts of strange and crazy ideas. He was a threat in countries like Africa and in the Middle East, but that somehow would never come to our own doorsteps.

 

ERIN: There is some complacency--that's what I was just going to say. I think that was a big portion of it.

 

CONAN: Well, Erin...

 

ERIN: Thank you so very much.

 

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call.

 

One point that Erin--do you believe that there has been better cooperation developed over the past year?

 

Ms. CORBIN: Is that a question to me, Neal?

 

CONAN: Yes, it is. It is.

 

Ms. CORBIN: I think so. Certainly there's been a willingness to get together and to talk about this. Within days of the September 11th attacks, I know that the Americans and 13 other intelligence agencies held a roundtable meeting to share what they knew about al-Qaeda. I don't think that would have happened before September the 11th. And I feel also that there is a willingness to share information, but will that last? I mean, we're not even a year on from the anniversary. You know, human nature being what it is, turf battles get fought, people want to protect their own information. And also, I think that the law is a big question mark. Certainly in Britain we've had a situation where the intelligence agencies have wished to round these people up, but the law has not allowed them to do so.

 

CONAN: We're talking about al-Qaeda, its survival and its continuing threat. After the break, an update on the financial arrangements of the al-Qaeda network. (800) 989-8255. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

 

(Soundbite of music)

 

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

 

We're talking about al-Qaeda and the war on terrorism. In our New York bureau is Jane Corbin, reporter for the BBC, the author of "Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network that Threatens the World."

 

And joining us now is Jonathan Winter--excuse me, Winer. He served in the Clinton State Department, and as that administration's point man on the international financial network of terrorist groups. He's with us by phone from his office at Alston & Bird, the Washington law firm where he now practices.

 

And Mr. Winter, welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.

 

Mr. JONATHAN WINER (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Clinton Administration): Glad to be talking with you, Neal.

 

CONAN: If you have questions about how al-Qaeda funds its terrorist activities, give us a call at (800) 989-TALK, and the e-mail address again, totn@npr.org.

 

And, Jonathan, according to recent reports, international efforts to stop the flow of money to al-Qaeda have stalled. Have the US and the international community failed to shut down the financial network?

 

Mr. WINER: Certainly, we're collecting a great deal less money now, and al-Qaeda has secreted away a fair amount of money here, there and everywhere. Whether we've stopped the flows, or at least slowed the flows substantially is a different question. We've broken down a lot of the existing networks. We've made it much harder for them to move money. We've identified portions of the infrastructure and we've begun to build an international regime for regulating and supervising financial flow so you can trace money back when things go wrong. It's a work in progress. It's very incomplete and it's certainly not finished at this time.

 

CONAN: Why is it so difficult?

 

Mr. WINER: Oh, well, many countries in the world have had no interest for many years in any kind of financial transparency, and whether you're a corrupt dictator or a drug trafficker or a criminal or a terrorist, in some cases whether you're an intelligence agency, you have wanted to be able to move money around, and in the Middle East there wasn't a single country that had any kind of anti-money-laundering regime that mattered prior to September 11th. It was very easy to move money any which way you wanted. Now there's the beginnings of a system, but there's a long way to go.

 

CONAN: There are also reports that al-Qaeda's finances operatives are holding large amounts of gold, moving it by small ships across to Dubai and then on to Sudan--the Sudan, rather. Al-Qaeda--how does that--you know, does gold make it even more difficult to track it down, and are these shipments impossible to track?

 

Mr. WINER: Well, no, gold actually is a big, hard, shiny substance, and usually you can see gold when people have it, so having gold means that they then have to find ways of moving it back into the financial system if they're going to get people taking money out of ATM machines in order to be able to conduct terrorist activities in the United States. It's kind of hard to give people gold for that halfway around the world, so I think that's actually positive.

 

Gold's been used by terrorists, by drug traffickers, by criminals for a very, very long time as one element. What al-Qaeda has done is it's diversified. You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket, and so they have to take their diversified financial empire and put a substantial portion of it in gold, but they still need to use international banks and other elements of the transnational financial services infrastructure, so they've got to move the money eventually, and trying to track that and disrupt that is the task.

 

CONAN: Jane Corbin, part of your book is obviously about the financial structure of al-Qaeda, and you were in Sudan in the days when al-Qaeda had offices there. What's changed? What's new? Is the squeeze on?

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes, the squeeze is definitely on, and as Jonathan says, you know, gold is a commodity you can see and feel and touch, and it is difficult to move it around. Certainly in the Sudan years, they operated effectively a sort of multinational corporation there. They had a number of front companies involved in all sorts of concerns, from agriculture and farming to commodities to road-building, and we saw then their ability to move money around and to really create sort of a 'Terror Inc.' They even had offices, personnel offices. The people that worked for al-Qaeda could get medical benefits.

 

But of course, that was in the past. They're now on the run. They're a very different kind of organization, but I think we are seeing signs that they are still finding ways to move their funds about, and Jonathan mentions the Middle East and the lack of, you know, encouragement, perhaps, that certain countries were giving to efforts to stop money laundering.

 

I was in Dubai after September the 11th, where it's believed that the bank accounts had been set up for the hijackers, who then took their money out of machines in Florida to pay for their training, their flight training. And when I was in Dubai, the authorities were claiming that they were now absolutely out for financial transparency and this would definitely happen, and I'll be very interested to know whether, in fact, that's happened or not, because it's obviously a very tough nut to crack, and these reports that gold is passing, I note, focus again on Dubai, which would seem to suggest, if they're true, that perhaps, you know, it hasn't really reached to the point at which we really feel we know what's happening in some of those countries in the Middle East with regard to these finances flowing through for al-Qaeda.

 

CONAN: And...

 

Mr. WINER: If I may--Dubai has done more than any other country in the Middle East over the last couple of years. It's got a comprehensive--the United Arab Emirates have a comprehensive anti-money-laundering regime, and it's still very, very problematic and wide open, and in particular it's not only a center for gold trading, it's also a center for hoalas(ph), so you have the intersection of gold, underground banking and banks to make it all work, and as near as I can tell, that has not happened yet.

 

CONAN: Jonathan Winer, is there any evidence of governments turning a blind eye to these operations?

 

Mr. WINER: Well, prior to September 11th, certainly. There were substantial amounts of money put into the international system by a number of important people in the Middle East for charitable activities to help Muslims where they're minority populations, including in places like Kosovo and Chechnya and the Philippines, where that money was diverted to terrorist purposes. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

 

Post-September 11th, it's much trickier. As near as I can tell, nobody wants to be supporting terrorism. It's really destabilizing for every country. Maybe there are hard-liners in Iran and Iraq for whom it wouldn't be true, but it would certainly be true for any of the Gulf states. So post-September 11th, I think reactively the US government has gotten very good cooperation. Proactively, there are still a lot of problems. There are a lot of entities in that part of the world that have been compromised, and sorting it all out is a very tricky business.

 

Also many people in that part of the world don't have a compliance culture. They don't have annual income taxes to pay. Accounting has got even less integrity, if that's imaginable, than some of the American corporations that have gone down in the past year, and so financial transparency is just a relatively new concept, and it's going to take them a long time to get there.

 

CONAN: Jonathan Winer, thanks very much for being with us.

 

Mr. WINER: Sure. Glad to be with you.

 

CONAN: Attorney Jonathan Winer tracked international financing for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the Clinton administration. He was with us by phone from his office at Alston & Bird, a law firm here in Washington, DC.

 

And joining us now here in Studio 3A is Vince Cannistraro. He was the CIA's chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis, and good to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.

 

Mr. VINCE CANNISTRARO (Former CIA Chief of Counterterrorism Operations and Analysis): Good to be back, Neal.

 

CONAN: How much progress has US intelligence made since September the 11th to prepare for confrontations with al-Qaeda, do you think?

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Well, it is starting from a fairly low level, and it has increased a great deal of the resources on counterterrorism. They've been focused on al-Qaeda. But they're starting from a level that was really substandard. The fact that they hadn't focused entirely on bin Laden's leadership, the nature of the threat that bin Laden presented to the United States, recognizing the kinds of operations that al-Qaeda might be able of carrying out, putting together a lot of bits of information that were out there into a coherent whole--they failed to do that.

 

So the questions really are, have they increased the quality of their intelligence gathering since September 11th? Have they increased the quality of their analysis? The information that they gathered, if it's not analyzed correctly, if it's not put into a coherent whole, if it's not tested against some basis of experience, is not going to be sufficient in order to forecast a new terrorist operation directed against the United States.

 

CONAN: We were talking earlier with Jane Corbin about how intelligence could have missed the signs that this was building up. Was this complacency? Was this misfocus? Was this inability to focus on anything smaller than a state?

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: I think all of those factors played a part, but clearly, the inability to recognize what kind of threat we were facing played the largest part in it. Unless you understand why people commit violence in the name of religion--I mean, this is religious absolutism that we're facing. We didn't have a lot of experience with that, and so we underestimated the capability of people like this to carry out a sophisticated operation resulting in mass casualties.

 

Yes, it was a fact that the intelligence community itself really was not structured to deal with this kind of asymmetrical threat. Its experience had been largely in the Cold War. It had been with subjects such as guided missiles, silos, nuclear weapons, but not anything that would give it the kind of background it needed to deal with this kind of a terrorist threat.

 

CONAN: Well, we now all know what tune you've got programmed into your cell phone there, Vince.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Sorry about that.

 

CONAN: Well, "A Jolly Tard"(ph) didn't quite square with us here in Studio 3A.

 

Our next caller is Mark, who joins us from Oklahoma City.

 

MARK (Caller): Yes, hi.

 

CONAN: Hi.

 

MARK: I have two questions. I guess these are mostly both for Jane.

 

CONAN: OK.

 

MARK: The first question is if you were to get, say, 20 members of al-Qaeda in a room and ask them what the basis of their antipathy toward America was, what would they say? What would they tell you? That's the first question.

 

And the second question is--I mean, it's my feeling that the world view of most Americans is profoundly ignorant, complacent and arrogant. And if you could take you or me or George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld or somebody like that and if they could live in the head of, say, an ordinary Palestinian or Iranian or Iraqi or Afghani for a few days and share their lives and share their thoughts, what would they learn? And would what they learn change their attitudes or change their behaviors?

 

And I'll take my answer off the air.

 

CONAN: Thanks very much, Mark.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Right. Well, let's go back to your first question about what would happen if you put 20 members of al-Qaeda in a room, what would be the basis of their antipathy toward America? I think you'd find a range there, an enormous range, depending on where those men came from, because we know al-Qaeda is present in at least 60 countries in the world. And depending on whether it was a person from the Yemen or from Egypt or from the Marghreb, the countries of North Africa, there would be slightly differing answers, I think. But they would have one thing in common. I think that at the root of it would lie a resentment, perhaps, at the way that America is seen to dominate the world culturally, the so-called cultural imperialism of America.

 

Often, there would be an anger at the fact that their own regime in whichever country we are talking about, perhaps Egypt or somewhere like Morocco, was seen to be somehow corrupt and in the pocket of America. And in a way, a lot of the anger that is directed by some of these young men towards the States has its foundation in an unhappiness with the regime at home. It's the case also with Saudi Arabia, obviously. A lot of members of al-Qaeda are Saudis. And there's a great deal of unhappiness amongst certain sectors of the population, young men from certain tribal areas, about the ruling family in Saudi Arabia.

 

So you've got a combination of unhappiness about the home conditions, if you like, resentment and anger about the way that America is seen to throw its weight around, and then we add to that, you know, we pour further flames on the fire, as it were, with the situation in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians, which many people in the Muslim world and across the Middle East believe that America is biased, in favor of Israel and against the Palestinians, and has done very little to solve the problems in that area. And finally, you can add Iraq to the scale as well. A lot of resentment, again, about the way in which the sanctions are seen to have affected the Iraqi people and left Saddam Hussein untouched.

 

So it's complicated. And, if you like, the genius of bin Laden and al-Qaeda was to somehow harvest all those feelings of resentment and grievance in a number of different countries, amongst a number of different groups, and to turn certain individuals--and, again, we're only talking about a very small minority--but to turn those individuals against America in such an extreme way as to cause them to volunteer for service with al-Qaeda.

 

CONAN: We're speaking with Jane Corbin. She's the author of the new book, "Al-Qaeda: The Terror Network That Threatens the World." Also with us, Vince Cannistraro, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

 

Our next caller is Gary, who's with us from Memphis.

 

GARY (Caller): Hey, Neal, great show.

 

CONAN: Thank you.

 

GARY: Very edifying. I have a question for your guests. Theologically, what is the difference between al-Qaeda's belief system and mainstream Muslims? And then I have a follow-up question.

 

CONAN: OK. Jane, would you go ahead? And this is not a simple question.

 

Ms. CORBIN: It is not. And, again, you know, we're talking, again, about a large umbrella here in terms of al-Qaeda bridging over lots of different groups from lots of different countries. But I think essentially the key lies in the form of Islam to which bin Laden adheres and many, indeed, the majority, in Saudi Arabia, which is the so-called Wahhabi sect of Islam. Now that was founded in the mid-18th century and it effectively sought to return to the very pure roots of Islam. But it has become, and it's been seen as being not only a pure form of the religion, but in the eyes of many it's a very militant form of the religion. And this is, if you like, the background from which bin Laden came. And it's certainly a background to which many of his followers adhere.

 

There are all sorts of names. You know, one could speak for hours about this. Sometimes we talk about the Salafi brand of Islam. Wahhabi is another name given to it. And even more extreme adherents call themselves Taktheris(ph). So there are a lot of name tags attached to this, but basically, they believe that--in getting back to the purity of Islam--for example, it is forbidden for foreigners, infidels, to be stationed or to live in the land of the holy places, Saudi Arabia.

 

And this, of course, caused bin Laden himself to set off on this path a decade ago when American troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to help to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. And this gave bin Laden, if you like, his final push towards forming a terror group, because of what he saw as American presence in the two holy places. So that's certainly a very strong factor.

 

Now the mainstream of Islamic thought and mainstream Muslim ideals do not necessarily follow along this line, and that's where you get the divergence and the split between the different branches. It is very, very complicated, but that's, if you like, the simplest form in which I can put it.

 

GARY: Can I ask a follow-up question?

 

CONAN: Go ahead.

 

GARY: Could al-Qaeda turn its sights against those Muslims that disagree or differ with them theologically? Do you foresee ever--you know, al-Qaeda attacking moderate Islamic countries? Islamic...

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes. And, in fact, it's already their sworn aim, which is to attack regimes which are seen as moderate or, in their terms, as impure, as regimes which have not adhered to the strict tenets of Islam. Yes, and they've already sworn to do this, and we have already seen, you know, action against Islamic governments in, if you like, more moderate Muslim countries. And there's a lot of content in the writings of the kind of books and articles and scriptures, if you like, that al-Qaeda follows which talks all the time about the impure strains of Islam and Muslims and criticizes them. And what's very interesting is that al-Qaeda has, or certainly used to have before the war on terror dispersed its members, its own sort of ideological committee within the organization which, if you like, gives the stamp of approval to some of these ideas and permits then the suicide bombers to go out and to make Muslims targets.

 

In Africa, for example, when the embassy was bombed in Nairobi, by far the greatest number out of the 200-odd people who died were African Muslims. But bin Laden, having some difficulties within his own organization after that, justified it by saying that they were, you know, somehow impure or that they were helping America and they were on the side of the infidel and, therefore, it was perfectly permissible to kill them. So this is the kind of debate we see going on inside al-Qaeda itself.

 

CONAN: Gary, thanks very much for the call.

 

GARY: Thank you.

 

CONAN: We're talking about Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda, its operatives, its money and the fight to stop it. You can continue this conversation online if you like. Go to npr.org, click on the discussion section and then scroll down to TALK OF THE NATION. We'll be back with more of your calls after a short break. (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. Or you can send us e-mail at totn@npr.org. I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

 

(Announcements)

 

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

 

As September the 11th approaches, we're all searching for the right words to say. It'll be a day of many speeches, so if you were the one making the speech, what are the words that you would pick? Send us an e-mail, not too long, please, so we can read as many e-mails as possible during our special coverage next Wednesday.

 

Today, we're talking about al-Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the September the 11th attacks on America. With us in New York is Jane Corbin, a reporter for the BBC who's written extensively about al-Qaeda. And here in Washington, in Studio 3A, Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis. If you'd like to get in on the conversation, the phone number is (800) 989-TALK. And the e-mail address, totn@npr.org.

 

And why don't we go right to the phones. And our next caller is Tom, who is with us from Frankfurt, in Germany.

 

TOM (Caller): Hi, Neal.

 

CONAN: Hi.

 

TOM: Thanks for doing a really, really great service and great job for all people around the world with your wonderful program.

 

CONAN: Thank you.

 

TOM: My comment and question for Ms. Corbin relates to the lady who called in a few minutes ago with two questions. Ms. Corbin seemed to be justifying United States sponsoring of state-sponsored terrorism by claiming that the United States had chosen to support the current president of Pakistan out of fear that something worse would happen if the United States did not do that. And, frankly, I don't think--you know, that just doesn't hold any water with me. That's a worthless argument. That's exactly what the United States did 20 years ago when George W. Bush Sr., the then-president of the United States, supported--Guess who?--Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was the wonder boy, the fair-haired savior of the United States who was the leader of the Afghanistan freedom fighters...

 

CONAN: Well...

 

TOM: ...who received support from the United States in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars per year for many years, and the United States built the Tora Bora mountain cave complex for him, for example.

 

CONAN: Tom...

 

TOM: Now here we are, 20 years later, with the son of George W. Bush claiming that the enemy is now Osama bin Laden. So how are we to--my question...

 

CONAN: That was George Herbert Walker Bush. But why don't we put that question, in fact, to Vince Cannistraro who was at the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Yeah. During that period of time, I was director of the Afghan working group at the National Security Council, and I can tell you, we never heard of Osama bin Laden during that period of time. In fact, Osama bin Laden doesn't come on the US radar screen until the Persian Gulf War. So I've heard all these stories about US supporting bin Laden, encouraging him. That's totally false, and I think I know that from having been operationally involved, at least at the policy level.

 

As far as the Musharraf question is concerned, Jane's absolutely right. There is no alternative but working with the government that's in place in Pakistan right now. What are we supposed to do? In the middle of the war are we supposed to encourage a revolution in Islamabad to replace the government? Only chaos could result in a situation like that at a time when we are trying to pursue al-Qaeda and we need the Pakistani military in order to seal the border and to go into those tribal lands and gather some of the Afghan refugees from al-Qaeda who are hiding there.

 

So I think it's interesting that people will say, 'Well, Musharraf is a dictator,' and clearly, he is, 'and he doesn't have a great democratic pedigree,' and that certainly is true. But what is the alternative? You're in a war; you have to work with what you have there. A lot of the people we work with--the Northern Alliance, for example, were instrumental in toppling the Taliban government--have a very, very poor human rights record. What was our alternative?

 

CONAN: Let me ask Jane Corbin a question, Tom, if you'll allow me. There were some other unsavory characters that the US did support at the time 20 years ago, some of the warlords who later helped destroy Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviet Union, in particular a man named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has re-emerged on the scene, Jane Corbin.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes. Certainly I think the Americans did support the mujaheddin, which, again, was a very broad church, during those years from '79 onwards. But Vince is correct that actually bin Laden did not come on the scene until a bit later. He started out as a fund-raiser and he spent much of his time shuttling between Saudi Arabia, where he came from, and Afghanistan and supporting the mujaheddin groups in raising funds. But he was never, to my knowledge, directly funded by America or supported or helped or armed in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda itself didn't come into being until the late-'80s, towards the end of that period, when he gathered fighters around him, having been a fund-raiser, to actually carry on as a different group and do the acts that he came to do against America. So I think you have to be very careful about dates. There are quite a lot of myths out there about bin Laden, and you have to be very specific about the dates that you're talking about, where he was, who he was and who was supporting him.

 

Now definitely the CIA did provide funds to the mujaheddin and arms, and they weren't the only ones. Britain did, as well. Members of our special services actually trained the mujaheddin in the use of Stinger missiles. So, yes, the West helped to arm the mujaheddin; as far as I know, they didn't actually support bin Laden himself. Neither did they build his cave complex at Tora Bora. He built it himself because his family was in the construction business. He was very good at knowing how to do such things. And he was jolly good at arranging how to get machinery over and back. That's the kind of thing that he was engaged in, in the early years there in Afghanistan.

 

But, Neal, you're absolutely right, the CIA did fund other groups and other individuals who were pretty unsavory, but not, as far as I'm aware, bin Laden.

 

CONAN: Tom, thanks very much for the question.

 

One of the most interesting parts of your book, Jane, is your profile, particularly of Mohamed Atta, the lead terrorist, if you will, involved in September the 11th. And I thought that your exploration of the situation in Germany and the establishment of the cell there in Hamburg was very interesting and particularly the amount of detail that you got into in talking with members of his family and his professor there in Hamburg, people who, in retrospect, must feel absolutely awful about their inability to see who this man was.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Yes, and you're talking about Professor Mukula(ph), who was the German professor who headed the urban studies department(ph) in the University there in Hamburg where Mohamed Atta was a student for five years. And this man used to see him on a daily, indeed, a weekly, basis and have him in a group of two or three students in his study. He really got to know him very, very well.

 

And he told me when I was interviewing him for my book that, you know, he really, still to this day, has not recovered from the shock of what Mohamed Atta did. As he put it to me, I mean, what can you say, how do you feel when you know that somebody that you have taught and have loved and have tried to help is a killer? And that's effectively what Mukula was faced with on September the 11th when, like everybody else, he watched those devastating television pictures and saw the face of Mohamed Atta come up, one of the first photographs released by the FBI, as the mastermind behind those attacks.

 

And it's not only Mukula, but I think the German authorities in general, the police organizations and their intelligence organization, who have been really stunned by the ability of al-Qaeda to dig into Hamburg, to remain undercover, a group of students in a university for several years going over and back to Afghanistan, getting training without anybody understanding what they were up to. And Mohamed Atta's family claimed that they hadn't the slightest inkling, either. His father is really a broken man.

 

But it's interesting because in speaking to him, we discovered that, really, many of the ideas that his son perhaps represented in a more extreme form had their origin in his father, who was a member of an underground Muslim grouping, the Muslim Brotherhood, which certainly some decades ago was a proscribed organization. And, you know, Atta Sr. had some very strong feelings about America as well. And I think you would see where some of the ideas that affected his son, Mohamed Atta, came from.

 

CONAN: We're speaking with Jane Corbin. She's the author of "Al-Qaeda." Also with us is Vince Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism operations for the Central Intelligence Agency. If you'd like to get in on the conversation, give us a phone call. Our number in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

 

And joining us now on the phone is John, who's with us from Medford, Oregon.

 

JOHN (Caller): Oh, hello, everybody.

 

CONAN: Hi.

 

JOHN: How are you today?

 

Ms. CORBIN: Hi.

 

JOHN: My question is for--Vince, is it?

 

CONAN: Yeah.

 

JOHN: The CIA guy.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Former.

 

JOHN: Former, yeah. How is the CIA changing its clandestine services to deal with the new threat with the terrorists? Are they going to hire anymore cowboys?

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Well, that's an excellent question because the inadequacy of their program against terrorism was pretty much exposed after 9/11. And so everyone has recognized they had to do things. They've thrown money at the problem, additional resources, additional staff. But the key component are people, or is people. And, yes, they are out actively recruiting new people to go into the clandestine services, to go into the anti-terrorism field. So if you're a potential candidate, look up the telephone number to the personnel office and apply.

 

JOHN: Historically speaking, when did they really cut the guts out of the clandestine service?

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: It's going on about 10 or 11 years right now. Part of it was a result of historical accident, the discovery of a major Soviet mole within the agency, Rick Ames, and how that threw the agency into great turmoil. And then the hunt for a second mole after Ames. And at that point, people started looking at everyone at the agency. Did they fit the norm or were they outside the norm? Well, some of your best people, some of your brightest people are a little bit eccentric, and they're outside the norm. And those are the people that suffered the most. Many people were fired or forced into retirement. A lot of people who weren't official cover--that means that they weren't officially identified as members of the US government; they were outside the US government but working for it--they also suffered the same fate. So political correctness infected the agency and also an unwillingness to get their hands dirty to go after a target that requires getting your hands dirty, dealing with people who don't use forks, for example.

 

JOHN: ...(Unintelligible).

 

CONAN: John, we want to get to some e-mailers, OK?

 

JOHN: OK. Thanks.

 

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call.

 

And there is an interesting question from Clark in Descanso, California. 'I'd like to hear some comment on the aims of al-Qaeda. It's not very useful,' he writes, 'to just continuously hear they're terrorists or they hate freedom or they're evil or they hate the US. Is there more to it than that? What are their goals?' Jane Corbin?

 

Ms. CORBIN: Well, bin Laden started out with one aim, which was to get the Americans to leave Saudi Arabia, to leave the land of the holy places. But I don't think it's his aim anymore. I think he's become very ambitious and he wants to destroy America. He wants to create as much damage as he can in America, and the spill-over from that is he's directing his energies against the West as well. So in a nutshell, I would say it started off with a very, pretty narrow aim, but it's broadened out.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: And we should...

 

Ms. CORBIN: And it's almost as if how--you know, there is no answer, really. You wonder what would satisfy Osama bin Laden. Would it satisfy him if America moved its troops from the Gulf? I think not.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: I think it's important also to note that his experience was first in Afghanistan where a ragtag group of mujaheddin who were supported by the West basically forced a superpower to surrender. When the Soviet Union marched its troops out in 1989, bin Laden and people who thought like him felt that they had scored a great victory with the help of God, not with the help of Stinger missiles, not with the help of the West, but God had struck them down. The other superpower, meaning the United States, was a large presence in the Middle East and, from bin Laden's point of view, a maligned presence, particularly in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries that were moderate.

 

Bin Laden's stated aim is to establish or re-establish an Islamic caliphate in the entire Muslim world. The biggest obstacle as far as he's concerned is the United States. If they were able to destroy one superpower in the Soviet Union, he believes they can destroy the other one.

 

CONAN: And before we go--and we just have about a minute or so left--this is an e-mail from Stephen Davis(ph) in Wichita. 'To follow up a stereotyped answer given by Mr. Rumsfeld, what are your guests' views on whether Mr. bin Laden is alive or dead in Afghanistan or elsewhere?'

 

Vince, quickly.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: I think he's alive. I don't think we've been able to find him. I think he's operating in an area along the Afghan-Pakistan border, moving with a small group of bodyguards. But I don't think that he's dead, and I don't think we've located him.

 

CONAN: Jane Corbin?

 

Ms. CORBIN: I believe that he's alive. I believe he's in that area still, southeast Afghanistan, Pakistan. Having been to the area, as I describe in the book, I can see full well why a small band of fighters could stay hidden there, moving from house to house often under cover of dark. I think we will hear from him again, and I think that al-Qaeda is definitely not finished.

 

CONAN: Hear from them again soon?

 

Ms. CORBIN: I fear soon.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Yeah, I think we will hear from them, I don't think on the scale we saw on 9/11, but we will hear from them.

 

Ms. CORBIN: I agree.

 

CONAN: Thank you both very much. Jane Corbin, we really appreciate it.

 

Ms. CORBIN: Thank you very much, Neal.

 

CONAN: Jane Corbin, the author of "Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network That Threatens the World," the newly published book. She was with us from our bureau in New York.

 

And, Vince Cannistraro, good of you to come in and join us.

 

Mr. CANNISTRARO: Thank you, Neal.

 

CONAN: Vince Cannistraro, the former chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis at the Central Intelligence Agency. He was with us here in Studio 3A.

 

In Washington, I'm Neal Conan, NPR News.