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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.
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