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CNN SUNDAY MORNING

Taliban Captive Gives Info About Terrorist Cell in Seattle

Aired July 14, 2002 - 08:08   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A Taliban captive in Guantanamo Bay is providing information about a possible terrorist cell in Seattle. The "Seattle Times" is reporting federal authorities are investigating a potential al Qaeda training camp at an Oregon ranch. According to that report, a British Taliban fighter held in Guantanamo Bay is giving investigators the link between Seattle militant Muslims and a radical London mosque.

As part of the investigation, the FBI and the federal grand jury looking into this are also looking at a now defunct mosque in Seattle.

And joining us once again to talk terrorism and homeland security, is CNN security analyst Kelly McCann. And, Kelly, good to have you back once again.

KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Thanks, Miles.

O'BRIEN: I'm curious, we started last time talking about, you know, what is verifiable, or actionable as the term is, intelligence -- I'm curious, you -- let's -- trace it from an interview in Guantanamo to the point where we're talking about it here on CNN. It goes through many, many stages of verification, correct?

MCCANN: It absolutely does. The interrogation techniques, of course, are varied so that no pattern can be determined by the person being interrogated, or the people being interrogated.

Once that information, bits of information -- and he may over time not even know that he is producing things that can be linked together -- it's collated. Once it's collated, and it becomes a specific piece of information, it's put into a system, and analysts look at that bit of information against other bits of information from other disassociated sources. And then, once they've got a corroboration, then they attempt to validate it any other way by looking, for instance, regionally -- looking at other social, economic, political events, et cetera.

Only at that time does it become intelligence, which is then verifiable by many different ways, and becomes actionable.

O'BRIEN: Well, of course, sometimes time is of the essence ...

MCCANN: Absolutely. O'BRIEN: ... and as these puzzle pieces are all brought together in very disparate ways, and they're viewed and reverified, things can happen in the real world. How much urgency is put into this process, and does it move nimbly enough to prevent these kinds of things?

MCCANN: It only will move nimbly enough, Miles, if the will of the people accepts some mistakes. I mean, let's be honest here, because the bottom line is, if something is imminent, within days, and you haven't already walked down that road, and you haven't already started to build the case, it's very unlikely that within days, you are going to reshift your focus, change satellite paths to get imagery, or whatever the requirement is for that mission to make it different at that time.

So, again, this is a very uncertain thing. Uncertainty is a huge element when it comes to warfare, and I think people have been too subjected to movies and fiction, where they believe that intelligence comes from a note on the back of a napkin that says, "Next Wednesday X is going to happen," and you know what -- it does. It's never that way. It never is black and white. Very, very, very rarely do you ever have anything that hard.

O'BRIEN: All right, but I guess you could, as an outsider I could say, "Well, if you got that napkin, why not run it down," or would that lead to a case where our limited resources would be stretched too thin and we might miss the real deal?

MCCANN: There's several reasons you don't run it down. You do run it down, but again, it goes to time and corroboration, et cetera, you have to validate the source. It's very analogous to the media industry. If you didn't know me, and I sent you an e-mail that said, "Hey Miles, XYZ," and you wouldn't run that story until you knew who I was, that I had a reason to know what it was I was telling you, et cetera -- that would be irresponsible.

And so is the use of intelligence. So, it is a process; one that's very hard to let people work outside of, because when you start working outside the process, it becomes fallible.

O'BRIEN: All right, I want to shift gears here just for a moment, and talk about Osama bin Laden. The latest comes from German intelligence, indicating he may in fact be alive. You said before this is just an irrelevant discussion. I'm sure -- I'm gathering you still feel the same way, but we ran a piece earlier from Garrick Utley, a really good piece, that talked about how it really doesn't matter -- it's like the Che Guevara kind of syndrome here, he -- his myth becomes larger than life, and in many ways, his demise or lack thereof doesn't matter a bit. In many ways, does Osama bin Laden become more potent if he is dead?

MCCANN: He is more potent with the unknown. If you know where he is, or you know in fact that is alive, it's less mythical than if he may be or may not be. You know, the trouble with this is, we can't even find evidence of the poor girl in Utah that's gone missing, and that's in our own country were we have full and broad legal capability to exercise anything we need too. To try to find a man, worldwide, can be a very, very difficult thing, but you can certainly find the footprint of an organization. And as you and I have discussed offline, that may be the way, and I think, in fact, the story -- the previous piece you mentioned, as you led in to me, indicates that that's the way things are going.

O'BRIEN: So, in other words, if he's going to do business, he will be traceable -- if he's on a satellite phone, or doing something like that.

MCCANN: They absolutely have to be traceable, because you have to communicate, somebody has to tell somebody to do something, where to pick something up, when is the right time, et cetera. There is a signature, no matter how subtle, there is a signature -- even at the point of impact Miles, when you're going towards the objective, there's a pre-incident indicator, while surveillance is being conducted, that -- there's a pre-incident indicator that shows you're being considered for target value. There's always a signature, you just have to know what to look for.

O'BRIEN: Kelly McCann, our security analyst, as always, very enlightening, interesting discussion, I appreciate your insights.

MCCANN: Thanks Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, take care.

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