We now know, for example, bin Laden was meeting with Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollahsecurity chief. Mughniyah, until yesterday, had killed more Americans than binLaden, had wounded more Americans than bin Laden. Mughniyah was involved withthe bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the takeover of TWA 847,and the murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem, the apprehension of severalAmericans who were held hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.
So this is an individual who has been aggressive in his attacks againstAmerica. And we now know through testimony that came out in the trial in NewYork City on the bombing of the U.S. embassy, that Mughniyah was the mentor,the ideological inspiration, for Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden saw Mughniyah asone who used violence to force the United States to retreat from Lebanon. Andhe believed that that same model could be used against the United States toforce it out of Saudi Arabia and to punish it.
Let's break that down. How does that lesson get learned? It starts, as yousay, earlier, circa the millennium?
In the millennium we still did not know that.
So, at the millennium, what do we know?
Well, at the millennium, we know that [bin Laden is] holed up in Afghanistan.He is working with ideological sympathizers, some who have their roots with theEgyptian Islamic Jihad, some who have their roots with the armed Islamic groupof Algeria. They've sort of merged together. Because although they come fromdifferent countries, they share a common vision of destroying the UnitedStates, eradicating the stain of U.S. influence that they view as sinful. Andyou've got to confront the sin by destroying it.
So we thwart some efforts. Does that diminish our anxiety about hiscapabilities? Does it make us complacent?
No. ... It sounds counterintuitive. On the one hand, we spend so much timetalking about [bin Laden] that we elevate his status to this invincible sort ofperson. And yet, at the same time, the individual who's carried out the mostspectacular terrorist attacks, or is tied to individuals who have carried outthe most spectacular terrorist attacks, in the last nine years is Osama binLaden. So you have to find the balance. And unfortunately, while the U.S.intelligence community is trying to watch and trying to monitor, the U.S.intelligence community and, frankly, other intelligence organizations are notset up or designed to penetrate groups like Osama bin Laden's.
So we come to the USS Cole incident. Briefly describe what happened there.How did that put bin Laden back on the radar?
Well, bin Laden, because of his ties to Yemen by virtue of his mother and theties to some people that are sympathetic to his vision of Islam, sympatheticand supportive of his fatwahs, calling for the death of Americans. Again, yousaw a sophisticated -- sophisticated in the sense that Arabs traditionally inconducting maritime terrorist attacks have been abysmal failures -- in thiscase, they were able to load sufficient explosives in a boat and have somenotion about the damage that would do to a ship and were able to get close.
Now, I still maintain that even though bin Laden was planning that kind ofattack and was hoping for success, I think failure of security measures on thepart of the U.S. captain of that ship contributed to it. That was not thefinding of the review board. But nonetheless, when you don't impose any kindof security parameter, you create opportunities for these people.
I think lurking in the mind of bin Laden and the al Qaeda group is the notionyou're going to strike a blow so decisive, so terrible, it will cause thecollapse of the society that they view as hollow. Western society is evil. Itis based upon liquor and prostitutes and not being faithful to Allah, as theyinterpret Islam. And therefore it's a shell that once you attack it, and hitit in its right spot, will collapse.
So with the USS Cole, with that attack, what did that tell us about binLaden's capabilities, about his organizational structure, and about al Qaeda?
I think we're still trying to sort that out. Because we got ourselves in a bitof a trap, and that trap is this: We're looking for evidence that will stand upin a U.S. court as opposed to taking information and intelligence that givesyou a reasonable basis for belief and action. And in the process of waiting todevelop evidence that you can present in a U.S. court, you end up tying yourhands. You can't take preemptive action because you want this case to goforward.
And I firmly believe in the importance of ... prosecutions as a way to try toeviscerate or try to weaken these people. But as we've seen in the events ofyesterday, with the attack on the World Trade Center, we have reached the pointnow where we can no longer afford that luxury. We do have enough informationabout bin Laden and his ties, at least in the embassy bombing in East Africa.The ability to be patient and say, "Let's wait and see if the Taliban willextradite him," is over.
How much do we really know about the Cole investigation? Set aside thelegal questions. From an intelligence perspective, how much did we really learnabout him? How much do we know in terms of his involvement in that operation?
I think there's a gap between what the intelligence community knows and whatthe criminal investigators know. The criminal investigators have moreinformation that is not necessarily being passed to the intelligence community,because the criminal investigators do not want that information to be tamperedwith or tainted in any way, so that if it does come to trial, they can get aconviction. And so you wind up with this interesting possibility that hashappened in the past, where the CIA has actually less understanding of what'sreally going on, in the evidence side, than does the FBI. And the FBI is in aposition to know, but does not or cannot share.
So, do we know whether bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole attack]?
I cannot sit here and say definitively bin Laden was responsible, no.
Now, there was this Internet video where he seemed to claim some credit forthat particular event.
Well, and that's where I come back and say, do I know that there's sufficientcriminal evidence saying bin Laden did it? No. But looking at it logicallyand circ*mstantially, he did not take the opportunity in that video to say,"Oh, this is an abhorrent act. I reject it." No, he celebrated it andaffiliated himself with it. Now, maybe he's like the rooster taking credit forthe sun rising. In any event, he not only associates himself with the act,takes credit for the act, but then continues to call for further acts of thatnature against the United States, and with other evidence of training inAfghanistan, albeit crude, but training designed for one purpose and onepurpose only, to kill Americans, to destroy the United States.
So when you put together the entire picture, starting with the World TradeCenter, running through the attacks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, up to andincluding the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa and finally, withthe USS Cole, once you see that the person, the same person is at least poppingup with a relationship in each of those acts -- while he may not have been [theone] to place the explosive, he may not have been the one that came up with theoriginal idea -- if everyplace I go there's a fire, at some point people aregoing to say, "When I see you, a fire breaks out. Let's talk to you aboutarson." And so from that standpoint, he's not a suspect because he looks thevillain; he is a suspect because he is the "here's Waldo" of terrorism. He popsup [wherever] there's a terrorist incident of some significance against theUnited States.
How difficult is it to then take action? In the case of the Cole, in aplace like Yemen? And how important is it to a bin Laden or somebody else totake a terrorist action in a place like Yemen?
Well, the issue in Yemen, from the standpoint of criminal prosecution, it's aproblem of the FBI and how they conduct themselves overseas. Despite repeatedincidents overseas, the FBI still has not set up a specially trained cadre ofpeople with language capability and cultural sensitivity who know what it'slike to go operate in Yemen. Instead, they put together a group, and it's likean old Mickey Rooney and Andy Hardy movie. Let's put on a show.
And so you pull people, special agents, some come from Louisiana, and when theygo to Yemen it's their first time outside of the United States. You know, theonly other time they've been outside of Louisiana was when they went toQuantico for training. So now they're in Yemen? And, you know, these areforeigners. And they don't do things the way they do in Louisiana or Texas orMissouri or Michigan.
Then after two or three weeks in that place, they're homesick and they want toget home and see their families. They don't speak the language. And theydon't necessarily have the proper cultural cues for working with the locals.And so it's no surprise that you wind up with these frictions where the Yemenisare not bending over to cooperate. Because they're feeling mistreated.
And you find the same experience in Kenya, the same experience in Tanzania, thesame experience in Saudi Arabia.
How important is cooperation in these other countries?
The FBI still has not learned the lesson that was demonstrated in the movie"Die Hard," where they show up and they take control and they completely trampleover the local police. They do that in the United States and they do thatoverseas. And it's not because they're trying to be bad guys. It's just thatthat's their culture. And they have yet to say, "Let's put together a specialinvestigative response unit. Let's put together ... one that speaks Arabic,one that speaks Spanish, one that speaks Chinese."
You put together groups that speak other languages, so that when you haveincidents in a particular area, you can pull that group together, send themthere with a reasonable degree of certainty that they're going to know how tolive in the culture, how to speak the language, and they're specially trainedfor it. And consistently, what the FBI has done, even in the latest incidentswith the USS Cole, was take a group of people that have no country knowledge,no language knowledge, [and] throw them into the mix.
Did we take anything from the USS Cole experience? Did we take away anyparticular lessons about the modus operandi of bin Laden or his willingness tostrike out?
I don't know what the government took away. What I observed is someone whocontinues to be creative at using low tech in an efficient manner. And again,to say that it's sophisticated, it's not sophisticated to put a large amount ofexplosives in a boat. You've got to have the ability to multiply, divide, andrun the conventional equations for predicting the effect of an explosive at acertain distance and maybe have conducted some tests.
So that means you've got to arrange some [place] where you can do this, thatyou've got access to water where you can do this. And you're willing toconduct some experiments and you've got sufficient explosives to do that.That's not terribly sophisticated. But that does mean that you have to havesome local cooperation or own a vast isolated stretch of an island or acoastline somewhere where you can work on that without being detected.
The trial of the accused in the embassy bombings in East Africa seems topresent some opportunities to learn more about the organization of bin Laden.
Well, it reflects that the U.S. knew a lot more about it from the FBI side thatwas allowed to come out in public. The source that the FBI used to reach theplea agreement, he'd served in the U.S. Army. He was an Egyptian. And he'dalso apparently been an FBI source at some time. His plea bargain with theFBI, with the U.S. government, was sealed. But what was released to the publicwas extremely revealing. It showed for the first time a confessed link betweenbin Laden, Mughniyah, and the Iranians. Now, up to this point, theintelligence community, and I know the National Security Council underPresident Clinton, believed that someone like a bin Laden would have noconnection or ties to Iran, [that he would be] diametrically opposed to [Iran]because the Taliban are opposed to the Iranians.
But when you see someone like Mughniyah meeting with bin Laden, and Mughniyahmoves freely back and forth between the Bekaa Valley and Iran -- and the BekaaValley is where the explosives come out that end up destroying the U.S. housingcomplex in Saudi Arabia -- and that the individuals who are involved in thatbombing attempt in Saudi Arabia again show up having links and ties with binLaden, all of a sudden, you need to step back and say, "okay, maybe this is notquite as we pictured it."
Maybe bin Laden is not just this freelance artist being tolerated by theTaliban. Is it possible that he's operating as an agent provocateur under afalse flag? He may think he's working for someone else, when he's doing thebidding of Iran. That's a possibility. What is clear is -- whether he's doingit on his own or with the encouragement of a state that's staying behind thescenes -- he is willing to use violence to destroy what he believes, what hegenuinely believes, is evil.
Help me understand who is Imad Mughniyah?
Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah security chief, planned and directed some of the mostastonishing terrorist operations until bin Laden came along. The bombing ofthe U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, the bombing of the U.S. Marinebarracks [in 1984], which until yesterday had caused the largest loss of lifein any single terrorist attack against the United States, the hijacking of TWA847, and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, the kidnapping ofseveral Americans that were held hostage in Lebanon for a while, such as TerryAnderson.
So this is an individual who continues to operate in the Bekaa Valley ofLebanon, continues with ties to Hezbollah, continues to be supported andprotected by the Iranian intelligence organization. And here he is meetingwith bin Laden. And, according to the source, ... the basis of the pleabargain is that everything he's saying in this is true, that bin Laden modeledhimself after Mughniyah. ...
And what did we learn about their relationship and how well connected theyhave become?
Well, we learned publicly in the trial that there's a relationship that was notprobed. And we do not know what's in the sealed parts of the indictment. Thismuch is known. There's a sealed indictment in the United States against ImadMughniyah that still has not been brought public. So the fact that those twoare tied together, when you step back and look over the last 20 years ofall the significant terrorist attacks against the United States in whichAmericans were killed or injured, you discover -- I ran the numbers -- it'sroughly 72 percent of all Americans killed and wounded in internationalterrorist attacks since 1968 have been carried out by these two individuals,Mughniyah and bin Laden.
So, we're not looking at a global threat. We're not looking at multiplegroups. This notion that all terrorists want to kill Americans, not true. Ifthat's true, why haven't FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] and ELM[National Liberation Army of Bolivia] been out attacking American targets andkilling Americans? They'll blow up oil pipelines, but they shy away fromkilling Americans. Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey, no compunction aboutkilling Turks in Europe. Very hesitant to kill Americans in Europe or inTurkey.
What about Hamas and Hezbollah? Even Hamas with its suicide bomb killing, wouldkill Americans who happened to be onboard buses, but not because they wereAmericans. And they reached a point at which, [with] the death of Americansand such, they backed away from the suicide bombing campaign.
The only one who's really been consistent with his actions to kill Americanshas been bin Laden over the last eight or nine years, and those who haveaffiliated themselves with him.
Now, would bin Laden have taken more than just inspiration from Mughniyah?Logistical support perhaps? What do we know?
Well, there was also testimony in this sealed document, or what was unsealed inthe plea agreement, that Iran was providing weapons and training along withencouragement through Mughniyah. So, weapons, explosives, training. So it wasnot Osama bin Laden, the lone wolf. But rather, he at least had some ties froma country that has been very active in terrorism over the last 20 years.
How would that affect somebody like bin Laden who's up in the hills inAfghanistan? Would that embolden him?
It would reaffirm in his mind the righteousness of his cause, that he is doingsomething that within his skewed religious vision is not only correct andproper, but is righteous and deserving of God's blessings ... Allah'sblessings, not Allah's curses.
So we have the USS Cole, we have evidence coming out of the East Africanembassy bombings that would suggest that bin Laden is not only more active, butfortified with accomplices and help.
Well, we need to keep in mind that while bin Laden is definitely a kind who iswilling to carry out spectacular acts with no regard for civilian casualties,nonetheless he's not able to conduct these on a weekly or a daily basis. Hehas been thwarted on several occasions. And when you look at the period from1998, in August of '98, when U.S. embassies were bombed in East Africa, untilOctober of 2000, over 24 months passed before he could carry off anotherterrorist spectacular. And here we are almost 12 months [later].
So we're looking at an individual who's got a network, but getting that networkset up and in place and ready to carry out these actions, so far he has notdemonstrated the ability to do it with any greater frequency than once a year.That's the good news. The bad news is, in the history of terrorists, there isno one that has come up with the vision of destruction and the willingness tocarry it out like him -- if in fact the ones responsible for this latest attackin New York are proven to have links to bin Laden.
Leading up to this latest attack, [were there] any inklings? If you've gota guy that you think is on your radar once every 12 months, 24 months, onewould think, you'd look at your watch and say, "Hey, it's about time he's goingto pop up again." Any indications that that might happen?
No. Because ... let me put it this way. I understand that there wasintelligence information pointing to supporters or adherents of bin Laden whowere receiving training in aviation operations. But not the specifics of,they're going to infiltrate the United States, they're going to fly out ofcertain airports, they're going to hijack [planes], and they're going to crashthem into major buildings. You know, no one connected those dots. I'velistened to some of the pundits who claim to be experts saying that they werenot surprised by this at all. Not even Tom Clancy in his wildest fantasiescame up with something this heinous and this outrageous.
And so then, to step back and recognize when you're dealing with individualswho are willing to die, and are willing to kill thousands of others without anyregard for the consequences, we have entered a new realm -- they've ratchetedup their activity to a level that they want to make sure it succeeds, and withthe belief that in succeeding they're going to destroy the United States.
If you look at the loss of life yesterday, and if it approaches 14,000 or more,in one day you've had more people killed in this incident in the World TradeCenter than have died from all international terrorist attacks since 1968worldwide. Americans, people from all other countries, more people diedyesterday in the United States from this single act than have died in allprevious international terrorist attacks in the last 32 years. That isastonishing. That takes us ... that's like trying to compare a bullet to anuclear bomb.
It is of a magnitude and a dimension that the world has not seen heretofore. Itis a wake-up call for the world -- if it's ultimately proven bin Laden's handis in it, and I think it will be. When he attacked the U.S. embassy in Africa,he wanted to kill Americans; he didn't plan to kill almost 300 Kenyans. Andwhen you kill 300 Kenyans, all of a sudden you've got a new enemy. And nowwhen you kill not just Americans, but the French, English, Germans, Russians,Swiss, Italians, Nigerians, Brazilians, you know, run down the list ofcountries, Chinese, Japanese. ... You've killed people from other countries.And they don't have to come out and come after you to punish you for killingAmericans. They come after you because you've killed their citizens.
And in that sense, we need to avoid portraying [bin Laden] as this master --he's not the Gary Kasparov of terrorism. He's not this chess master who'sthinking two or three steps ahead. He is more like an impulsive teenage boywho acts on emotion and acts on conviction without fully weighing theconsequences of his actions.
All he's guaranteed himself out of this is not a victory in the Islamic world-- he'll even gain the condemnation of most of the Islamic world -- but he'sguaranteed the opposition of the rest of the world. And I don't care who youare. You cannot stand up against the world with that kind of pressure. ...
Prior to the [latest attacks], there didn't seem, as you said, to be anysolid information. But at the same time, if there's intelligence about some ofthe bin Laden organization taking flying lessons, how does it work inside theintelligence community? What kind of alarms does that signal? And what happensto that information? What's made of it?
When it's turned over to the analysts, the analysts have to sit down and say,"What are the possibilities here?" And I'm sure you're going to find thatnobody in the analytical community sat down and said, you know, "What [arethey] preparing to do? They could possibly be preparing to come in andcommandeer an aircraft and then take control of that aircraft and crash it intothe World Trade Center or the Pentagon" -- nobody foresaw that. So you cancall that an analytical failure. And that may be too harsh, because ... thisis asking people to imagine the unimaginable. But at the same time, while it'sunimaginable or at least was unimaginable, it is nonetheless something that iswithin the realm of capability. As opposed to the scenarios about nuclearweapons or chemical and biological weapons, which are much more difficult toget access to and to use.
And part of the problem comes back to the nature of the sourcing of thisinformation. I don't know if this is signal intelligence. I don't know if itwas human intelligence. But when an analyst sits down and weighs it, itdepends very much on the source.
And really the fundamental problem the United States faces in dealing withentities like bin Laden and his supporters is that the existing intelligenceapparatus is still organized to defeat a conventional Cold War enemy. And thatmeans your intelligence operatives are going out in other countries to recruitpeople who are at co*cktail parties and diplomatic functions and officialgovernment functions. You're looking for people who are in positions of powerin the other government who can tell you what's going on.
How do you penetrate an organization which is largely ideological and bound byreligious fervor? They don't have a membership. You don't have to fill out anapplication. It's not like joining a country club. You are brought togetherby the commonness of belief that is shared in worship. And in the faithfulapplication of your religious faith.
So how do you penetrate that? Well, then you have to have people who speak thelanguage and who can come off as committed enough on that religious front. Andthen ultimately, you may be asked to demonstrate your faithfulness byparticipating in some act of terrorism or killing somebody. And at that point,our intelligence apparatus goes, "Wait a minute. We're not going to do that."And it's the classic problem of, you've got rats, they live in the sewer, butyou don't want to get in the sewer because it's dirty. It smells. And youmight get sick from being around it. So you want to stay out of the sewer andtry to kill the rats. And you know what? You've got to make a choice. Eitheryou've got to get into the sewer or you've got to learn to live with the rats.
And we don't want to get in the sewer?
We made the decision about 10 to 15 years ago not to get in the sewer. And thepush has been more and more away from the sewer. I mean, again this is not tojustify what has taken place in Peru, in the case of [Vladimiro] Montesinos,the intelligence chief there. But recently, you've seen a big uproar about,What was the CIA doing? And who were they talking to? And why was this guystealing money? With hindsight we're geniuses. But when you're trying tocollect information and keep track of what someone's doing, you sometimes haveto be willing to do things which may not pass the Nobel Prize human-rightssniff test.
But we've got to decide. If we want to win the Nobel Prize for human rights,that's OK. That's a noble goal. But that will not allow you to haveintelligence operations that will anticipate and detect terrorist plots likethe one that brought down the World Trade Center.
Or maybe we're just asking too much of the intelligence community.
No, I don't believe that. It's not that we're asking too much of them. It'sthat they structurally are not set up and organized, they're still like someonesitting in a wheelchair being asked to run a marathon. ... So it means you'vegot to get them out of the wheelchair, get the legs functioning, which requiresa complete structural change, and it's not easy.
And the only advantage, if there is any silver lining in this disaster ofyesterday, when those planes flew into the World Trade Center, is this may be asufficient catalyst to force changes in the intelligence community and in thedefense community that the United States has been unwilling to address inrecent years.
How do you respond to this, if it is in fact bin Laden? How easy is it tofind him? Why haven't we found him? And what about this friend of his,Mughniyah?
I believe it's easy to find anyone if you're willing to pay enough money. Andwe have not yet been willing to pay enough money. I don't think anyone hasgone yet to the CIA and to the operations unit and said, "OK, we don't carehow much it costs. We're not going to look over your shoulder and criticizeyou. We want you to take as much money as you need and get this guy. And ifyou need a year, that's fine. If you need two years, that's fine. But gethim. You set a date, but get him."
And with that amount of money in place, it reminds me of the line from "TheGodfather" where Al Pacino made the point, you can kill the president if youreally want to. So I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. Butwe have got to be willing to play the game in a way that we're not willing toplay right now. Because right now how is it done? Well, first let's have thatbudget appropriation. Tell me how you're spending the money. And then let'smake sure that nobody is making something on the side. And then let's makesure we account for every penny. We want to be IRS accountants in chasing aguy that's killed 20,000 Americans.
So I go back to the rats in the sewer. We've got to figure out, do we want toget rid of the rats? Or do we want to stay out of the sewer? And so far ourchoice has been we want to stay out of the sewer. We want to stay clean. Butwe'd sure like to get rid of the rats.
Did the bombings yesterday change that?
We'll see. I have talked to too many friends who have far more experience withthe operations community than I do and who are experienced operators and whohave run some of the most sensitive programs overseas. They say the agency isbroken. It needs to be dismantled and something new put in place. And I'm notjust talking about the isolated opinion of one person, but several.
So put yourself in the mind of bin Laden right now, the day after. What'she thinking?
He probably feels like the Baltimore Ravens after they won the Super Bowl.Only he's not going to Disneyland. He may think about that as his next target.But he thinks he struck a blow. And again, a lot of this depends upon how muchinformation gets to him. Because ... he's not living like a drug lord inColombia with satellite televisions and hot tubs. He remains very much anascetic who lives a monastic lifestyle.
And so consequently, he may not be fully in touch with what's going on and howthe world's reacting. But as that information filters in, there will besuddenly this realization that instead of being applauded, instead of theMuslims of the world rising up and saying, "Bin Laden, you're right. Let'skill the Americans." Instead, he'll say, "My God, most of the Muslim world isstanding there in shock saying, 'What have you done?'" And with that, hisability to move and operate in other places will be circ*mscribed. ...
So his mistake was being too successful?
Yes. This ... I would describe yesterday as his pyrrhic victory. He has won atremendous battle and it will lead to his downfall. And it's unfortunate thatit's taken so many lives to accomplish that.
You mentioned at the time [of our previous interview] that we weremaking too much about bin Laden at that time. That if he had the wherewithalto kill Americans and attack U.S. targets he would do so, but he hadn't. Whatchanged?
What changed is, I think he came to believe our propaganda. Our focus, bymaking bin Laden so important a target and the constant emphasis -- if yourecall earlier this year, in the face of threats, it wasn't just that we closecivilian institutions, but the U.S. Seventh Fleet puts to sea, Marines arewithdrawn, U.S. military forces go into the duck and cover. At that point, ifI'm bin Laden, I'm saying, "If my threats force the military to retreat, whatwill my actions do?" And, you know, up until the attack ... on the World TradeCenter [he had not shown] a willingness to really incur the casualties of lotsof Americans -- men, women, and children.
And I don't know if it was a frustration that the other attacks were notachieving his objective and that in that frustration he's overreached, but thismuch is certain: By killing so many people and by destroying the World TradeCenter towers, whatever measure of success he wants to take from it, he hasgalvanized a level of opposition and intensity against him that did not existbefore. And by crossing that threshold, by now deciding that he's willing tokill Americans regardless of whether they're military or diplomats, but justcommon people going to work, that he's made himself enemies that he did nothave before.
You said [in our previous interview] "... Osama bin Laden in my view has notbeen a very effective organizer or leader. He talks a great game."
Yeah. Well, he repeatedly calls "Muslims of the world unite." He doesn't havea great following. He has a fervent following. Those who do enlist and signup with him are true believers. But at the same time, and let's take thepicture that was presented in the case of the East African embassies. Hereagain, while bin Laden is described as this guy with this incredibleinternational organization, multi-millionaire, the picture that emerges is of aguy who's tight-fisted, sends his people out to live in places where they don'thave enough money or enough to eat and they're always scrounging around.
And it's not that they're trained with the latest technology and the bestweapons and the best clothing and the best hotels and the best of anything --it's enough to get by. And if they can be effective, great. And if not, youknow, you go on to the next target. You saw it again with the failedmillennium plot. I mean, these individuals, they're going to go to LAX andblow up the airport. Where are they going to place the bomb? Well, they'regoing to figure that out when they get there.
Well, if you're going to do proper target attack, you recon your target first.And you figure out where you can get access. Plus, the way the guy washandling explosives raises questions about whether he was properly trained.Because he was lucky he didn't blow himself up at the border.
So you're describing somebody who has an organization that seems moderatelyeffective. And yet, how does that compare with what just happened?
Again, you saw the same pattern yesterday. Here again, the individuals whocarried out the attack, they leave their car with all the Arabic flight manualsvisible at Logan airport, easy to find. The impression that this was a highlysophisticated operation, that only the greatest criminal mastermind could pulloff, I dispute that on several accounts. If you've got a credit card, you canbuy the plane tickets for the four aircraft. And let's be generous. Let's saythere were five persons per plane. That's twenty tickets. You can buy thosewithin two hours. And you can do it over the Internet. That's number one. Soyou've got your tickets.
Then you've got to make sure that you've got at least one person, and morelikely two people, per team who can maintain flight speed and can turn a rudderright and left. That you provide some basic flight training. It doesn't haveto be terribly sophisticated. But you're not trying to say, "OK, we want youto be able to take off and land the aircraft." If you're talking about that,then you're talking a level of sophistication that did not occur.
Weapons. The initial reports are that in neither case do they go to the effortof getting weapons smuggled onboard the aircraft, but rather they used eitherknives that were allowed to be on the plane or could be jury-rigged insuch a way that it could represent a threat but would pass security. ...
The reason I don't think it's sophisticated [is that] it didn't require a lotof time or money to buy the tickets. It didn't require a lot of time or moneyto train people to maintain air speed and figure out which way to turn theaircraft. It did require some effort to figure out how to get the people intothe country. But that is not, particularly in the United States, an impossibletask. And if you've got enough money to forge passports, which bin Laden does,that's not difficult either. So it requires a basic ability to organize. Butin organizing, again, these people didn't organize themselves in such a waythat when they carried this out their tracks were so well covered that theinvestigators are sitting there scratching their heads. Instead, they leftfootprints the size of elephants.
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