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CNN THE POINT WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN
Insight into the CIA's Secret Operation; Justice Department Ups Ante on Domestic War On Terror
Aired November 29, 2001 - 20:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Upping the ante on the domestic war on terror.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Department of Justice will provide immigration benefits to non-citizens who furnish information to help us apprehend terrorists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And as more Marines are ready to go on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, we'll get insight into the CIA's secret operation from former CIA director, Stansfield Turner.
Fighting for Afghan women's rights: Tonight, Senator Hillary Rodham takes up the cause.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We began this investigation as a missing person investigation. From there, it went to a more criminal bent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The mystery of the missing professor. Did his expertise on bioterrorism make him a target?
Now, from Washington, Greta Van Susteren.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: It's dangerous duty, even deadly, intelligence gathering. And tonight, despite the loss of a CIA officer, this picture says it all. The digging goes on in Afghanistan with Marines and intelligence operatives secretly hunting down Osama bin Laden.
I'm joined by former CIA Director Stansfield Turner on the perils of tracking bin Laden.
Sir, thanks for joining me this evening.
STANSFIELD TURNER, FMR. CIA DIRECTOR: Greta, glad to be here.
VAN SUSTEREN: Sir, are you surprised by the role of the CIA, as least as much as we know the role of the CIA in this military action?
TURNER: No, I'm not. The CIA and the military have worked together many times in history. In Vietnam, there was a lot of interplay between them. During the Carter administration, there was we and the CIA, who flew into the desert of Iran and explored the site that became what we knew as Desert One when the military did a rescue operation. So there was real teamwork there.
This is the same kind of thing where the CIA has a little better feel for the territory, a little better set of contacts with the people. And they've gone in and tried to blaze the trail.
VAN SUSTEREN: When you say blaze the trail, exactly what do you see as the role of the CIA in this operation?
TURNER: Well, if we're trying to find bin Laden, the best way to do it is to get somebody to tell you where he is, somebody who knows that. We've offered a $25 million reward. I think the CIA must be in there manipulating that, as much as they can. Finding contacts that they can rely on, people who are reliable, and getting them to explore where bin Laden is actually hiding out.
VAN SUSTEREN: How do you do that?
TURNER: How do you do that?
VAN SUSTEREN: Yes?
TURNER: Well...
VAN SUSTEREN: That would be the $25 million question.
TURNER: In any kind of intelligence operation, you have a number of inducements. Number one, maybe the people you're working with think that the United States will help them achieve power in Afghanistan, if they cooperate with us. Number two, of course, there is just plain money. Number three, sometimes these people are idealists and they say we don't have a bin Laden around. And if you're going to get rid of him, it's better for our country. And so, they will cooperate with you.
have to look at each individual person, his or her background, and try to assess what would trigger this person to help us?
VAN SUSTEREN: Are the CIA officers over there, are they almost like satellites? They get sent over there and I mean, they don't stay in a group? Like they don't have troops in a sense that you think of the military? And they're wandering around almost with cash in their hands, trying to get information? Or is it different? Is it more military-like?
TURNER: No, it's a little more military. This is a military type branch of the CIA that does, what we call, paramilitary action. That is, sometimes they go in and blow up bridges or do actual operations on their own. Sometimes they equip other people and train other people to do those things for us. But they're a pseudo military arm of the CIA, usually made up of people who've served in the military and then come over for a second career in the CIA.
VAN SUSTEREN: Can you give me some idea of at least how big the paramilitary force was when you were at the CIA? I mean, I have no concept of how big this group is?
TURNER: Well, we're talking a few hundred people.
VAN SUSTEREN: And most of them are former military?
TURNER: Yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: What do you see? I mean, not to put blame on anybody, but rather to sort of learn, you know, learn from our mistakes. Many people say that the terrorism of September 11 was an intelligence failure. Is that how you see it? And if so, where did we go wrong and how do we fix it?
TURNER: I don't think we made a full adjustment to the fact that the Cold War is over. And we aren't asking the right questions. We weren't asking the right question then, which was, where's a different threat going to come to our country?
Secondly, after Pearl Harbor, we had a post-mortem. And what did we find? We found out that intelligence agencies weren't talking with each other enough. And the information wasn't being shared. I'm afraid that we're going to find in a post-mortem of 9/11, that the clues were not all being brought together in one place.
VAN SUSTEREN: Boy, they sure didn't stick out, at least, if they did. Thank you, sir very much for joining me this evening.
TURNER: Glad to be with you.
VAN SUSTEREN: Next, she says it's America's obligation. Senator Clinton, when THE POINT returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAN SUSTEREN: She says for years that women of Afghanistan have had no say. Forced to be silent, punished, even tortured if they didn't obey. Today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other members of Congress gathered in Washington to listen to Afghan women and fight for a new role for them in their government.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Because a country that respects all of its people is a country that is less likely to harbor terrorists, that is less likely to take stands against others who are not like themselves.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAN SUSTEREN: Joining me now, Senator Clinton and one of the many Afghan women she's supporting, Susan Safi-Rafiq. Thank you both for joining me this evening. CLINTON: Thank you.
VAN SUSTEREN: Senator, first to you. I can't think of a worse place that I'd want to live as a woman than Afghanistan. And I think that's probably true of many American women. But given that, why is it America's business what goes with women in Afghanistan short of life or death issues?
CLINTON: Well, Greta, this is life or death. It certainly was life or death when we were attacked on September 11. The instability of the regime in Afghanistan allowed the terrorists to take root there and to plan their attacks against us.
But beyond that, we know from the developments in the world that where women are given their rights, where they are educated, have access to healthcare, their societies are more likely to be stable, more inclined to be democratic. That's not 100 percent, obviously.
And what we're now faced with is with our rapid military success on the ground, having to look for the future. What will happen after the Taliban are finally ended? The al Qaeda network is rooted out? What kind of government will there be? Will there be a stable government that will be friendlier to the United States?
VAN SUSTEREN: But you know, in listening to them, and you know it's I want the women of Afghanistan to have equal rights. Those are my values. But when you look at Kuwait, which is a country that we have gone to war to fight. The women can't vote in Kuwait. They couldn't even hold your office in Kuwait. They can't hold political office, but we're not all, you know, there isn't that sort of groundswell of support for those women.
You know, so how do we justify Afghanistan? Is it that the country is in such shambles? Is that the justification?
CLINTON: Well, I think the Taliban regime established what amounted to an apartheid system when it came to women. It's true that there are other places in the world that I've spoken out about for many years, that don't provide the full range of rights that I think every women is entitled to, since I do believe women's rights are human rights.
But no regime did what the Taliban did. It is one thing to say we're not going to let you vote. It's another to say we're not going to let you go to school. We're not going to let you go out of your house. We're not going to let you work. We're not going to let you be a human being.
VAN SUSTEREN: And of course, even in Saudi Arabia, women can't even drive. But let me go to Susan. Susan, how bad is it for women?
SUSAN SAFI-RAFIZ, AFGHAN NATIVE: Very bad, Greta, very bad. The reality -- the truth is that women in Afghanistan did have constitutional rights. The right to vote was established in the 1920s. Women in my country had the right to vote in the 1920s. Through the process of a lawyer jurga, women had constitutional rights. Women were a part of parliament. In 1964, they had equal rights for education and all sections of their communities. And I watched the generation of my grandmother and mother become professionals and work for the country.
VAN SUSTEREN: You know, Susan...
SAFI-RAFIQ: This is something that needs to be said over and over again, so that people around the world know that it's not being imported by so-called America or the rest of the world. Democracy and human rights and equal rights for women had been in place in Afghanistan previously. It was just through the Taliban and vision of my country that women have been taken away their rights legally, by legal decrees. And that is unacceptable.
CLINTON: You know, and Greta, what the point that we're making is that in Afghanistan, we're fighting to restore women's rights because they were in existence. That doesn't mean we're going to not continue our fight for women's rights everywhere in the world. But Afghanistan posed a particular problem because as Susan said, there were rights for women until the Taliban came along.
VAN SUSTEREN: Are you optimistic, I mean, that the rights are really going to come back, I mean the ones, the restoration?
SAFI-RAFIQ: I am very optimistic looking at the processes going on in Bonn today. I'm very optimistic...
VAN SUSTEREN: There weren't a lot of women, though, involved in the Bonn negotiation. I mean, that sort of -- I mean, many women are disappointed.
CLINTON: Well, but what? There were six women over? That's six out of what, 30?
SAFI-RAFIQ: Yes.
CLINTON: That's a higher percentage than I have in the Senate.
VAN SUSTEREN: 8 percent. There you go.
CLINTON: 8 percent women in the Senate.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, I'll give you that. Susan, do you think that the women in Afghanistan, do they want American help on this? If so, what's the help that Americans can give?
SAFI-RAFIQ: Greta, of course, people in Afghanistan, including the women of Afghanistan, need the international community, the support. They have run out of the energies for the last 23 years in the stage of war. They need the support of international community to rebuild their communities. They need to restore peace for the country.
Once an independent Afghanistan is established, then the restoration of their constitutional rights of Afghan women becomes very crucial in the process of reconstructing the country. VAN SUSTEREN: Senator, what is it that America can do? What can the Senate do?
CLINTON: Well, we talked about that today. That's one of the reasons we wanted to hold the hearings, so that we could hear from the women themselves. It wouldn't be our decision as to what we thought they needed. They would be telling us.
And I think the message came across loudly and clearly. Number one, we do have to finish the work that we've started on the ground militarily. We do have to support the restoration of a government that will respect the rights of all of the Afghani people and particularly restore the rights of women.
We have to provide some assistance. Humanitarian assistance, of course, but also let's get schools open again. There's a whole generation of young girls who have never been to school. Let's get the support we need for women to get back into the workplace. Let's create income-generating jobs that these women can have to support themselves and their families. Let's get the hospitals open again, so all the women nurses and doctors can go back to work and women can have healthcare again, which they were denied under the Taliban.
So there is a big agenda. It's not American agenda alone. Of course, it should be and needs to be an international agenda. But the point that I think all of agreed on is that having made the commitment to root out the terrorist network and really to liberate the people from the Taliban regime, we cannot leave Afghanistan again, as we did more than 10 years ago, when the Soviets was driven out.
Remember that the mujahedeen that formed the Northern Alliance were funded by the United States. They did not govern Afghanistan in a way that built confidence and kept law and order. So the Taliban replaced them.
Now I'm very proud of the work that our military has done in rooting the Taliban. We can't walk away. And we're going to have to find the appropriate balance between supporting the Afghan people in their struggle and providing a continuing American presence.
VAN SUSTEREN: And that, of course, raises the question in my mind. Susan, do you want to go back there and live there?
SAFI-RAFIQ: I would very much like to, once security and peace in the place with the governing -- with the supervision of international peacekeeping forces. I would like to go back and continue with my work, working with widows and for the children of Afghanistan.
VAN SUSTEREN: How long of you been here?
SAFI-RAFIQ: I've been here 10 years.
VAN SUSTEREN: And what brought you here?
SAFI-RAFIQ: I left my country right after the Russians invasion of my country. I was a medical school student. And I was taken right away. I couldn't continue with my medical school studies. And that's how I know how important it is to have an education.
And the Taliban were taking away the right to education for women. Have turned my country into an uneducated generation of young girls who were seven-year-old seven years ago. And now they're 14. And in this process, we need to start rethinking the process of education where these 14-year-old girls who are the future of my country get some kind of education that will teach them how to read and write like first graders.
VAN SUSTEREN: In the few seconds we have left, Senator Clinton, in your wildest dreams, can you imagine living like this, you know, in the way these women have lived?
CLINTON: You know, Greta, when women first came to me when I was in the White House and asked me to speak out against any recognition of the Taliban government because of the way they treated women, I was shocked. And the first time I saw a burka, I could not believe it. I tried it on. And I thought to myself, "How on earth could anyone ever function?"
VAN SUSTEREN: And you know what's particularly nice about this issue is that both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, are 100 percent behind this particular issue. My thanks to both of you for joining me this evening.
SAFI-RAFIQ: Thank you, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: Up next, crime or coincidence? I'll talk to someone close to the missing Harvard professor. THE POINT is back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAN SUSTEREN: Now crime or coincidence, the case of the missing professor. 57-year-old renowned Harvard University biochemist, Dr. Don C. Wiley, disappeared November 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. He had gone there for a scientific meeting. His rental car was found abandoned on the Hernando Desoto Bridge. The car doors unlocked. The key still in the ignition. He was nowhere in sight and hasn't been heard from since.
Dr. Wiley is one of the world's most famous researchers of deadly viruses, viruses such as AIDS and Ebola, which could be used in bioterrorism. Is something fishy here?
Joining us to talk about it, one of his friends Dr. William Evans, deputy director of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. and one of the last to see him. Dr., thanks very much for joining me this evening.
WILLIAM EVANS, DEPUTY DIR., ST. JUDES: Good evening, Greta. It's certainly not a pleasant occasion, but all of Don's colleagues and friends want to do whatever we can to get the word out and hopefully locate Dr. Wiley. VAN SUSTEREN: Dr., when was the last time you saw him?
EVANS: I saw Don Thursday evening. We had had dinner together and then we were chatting after dinner with a number of colleagues, members of our faculty and our board of advisers that Dr. Wiley's on. And it was probably 11:30 in the evening.
VAN SUSTEREN: And where did he say he was going? I assume that at that point the evening had sort of ended for everybody?
EVANS: Yes, we were chatting about science, politics. Don was also chatting about his family. And they were flying into Memphis the next day. His son and daughter and wife. And he was going to stay with his father that evening and then pick them up after our meeting the next morning, which was the final session of the advisory board. And then he was going to spend the weekend in Memphis with his family.
VAN SUSTEREN: Was there any suggestion of marital discord? Or did he indicate that he was troubled in any way?
EVANS: No. Typical Don Wiley, he was caring the conversation. He was very upbeat. And he was asking us where else in Memphis he should take his children, other than Graceland. And we were talking about the Civil Rights Museum and various -- the zoo and this sort of thing. So he was very upbeat and leading the conversation as he typically does.
VAN SUSTEREN: And what was the neighborhood like, where were you having dinner?
EVANS: We were downtown Memphis in the Peabody Hotel. And you know, around the hotel is a lot of life, Bill street, and theaters and this sort of thing.
VAN SUSTEREN: Is there anything about his work or is there anything unusual about him that would suggest a reason why he might be a target of foul play?
EVANS: Well, I don't think so. I mean Don is a brilliant scientist. And he's done some amazing work. He's received some of the highest prizes in the world for his scientific accomplishments. He does work on problems related to Ebola virus, or influenza or HIV. And these are potentially deadly infections, but the kind of work that Dr. Wiley does is really focused more on how the body protects itself from those infections.
And that kind of knowledge, that kind of expertise, you know, should be of very little value to anybody trying to do anything inappropriate with those viruses, for example.
VAN SUSTEREN: Dr., if there's a blueprint from facts, and of course, there never is in a situation like that, but you have a car abandoned on a bridge with keys in the ignition, it sounds like a suicide. It doesn't necessarily mean that it could be. I mean, he may have disappeared or been kidnapped or foul play, but is there anything about him at all that would make you suspicious of that?
EVANS: No. I mean, I know that's the first thing on everyone's list when you sort of hear that list of how the car was found, but those of us who know Don and have known him for a long time, who know his work, and it's going extremely well, who know the way that he interacted and talked about his family, and just saw him that evening, the way he was carrying on, we think it's inconceivable that Don could have done anything to harm himself. And so, we're looking for other explanations as to his whereabouts.
VAN SUSTEREN: And of course, we're all hopeful that he's going to turn up alive and well. My thanks to his friend, Dr. William Evans.
EVANS: Thank you.
VAN SUSTEREN: You've heard about atrocities committed against women in Afghanistan by the Taliban. You would think you had heard it all.
Tonight's final point, hang on to your seat. Apparently, the Taliban's abuse extended beyond the human race. You're looking at video of a lion in the Kabul Zoo. Do you wonder why his face looks so bad? The incredible answer is he has been tortured by the Taliban. One of the Taliban fed him a hand grenade. Now he can't see and he is missing teeth. You might wonder what happened to the birds in the zoo. Wonder no more, the Taliban ate them. That's not all, but I will spare you more stories.
Now contrast these images with this video, pictures of the newest resident of Washington's National Zoo, and Asian elephant born just a few days ago. The zoo director said his birth, a very rare occurrence from captivity brought tears of joy to the international team that worked to make it possible. His photo and birth announcement appeared on the front page of "The Washington Post." What a difference.
Some people celebrate life and others, well, you know. My point, this is one time when you don't have to wonder who the animals are.
Let me know what you think about the Taliban's treatment of women and animals. Send an e-mail to askgreta@cnn.com. That's one word, askgreta.
I'm Greta Van Susteren in Washington. Senator Joe Lieberman is among the guests next on "LARRY KING LIVE." And I'll see you back here tomorrow night.
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