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Sunday Morning News

USS Cole Attacked: Recovery Efforts Continue as FBI Launches Full-Scale Investigation

Aired October 15, 2000 - 9:36 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The bodies of some of the U.S. sailors killed in Thursday's attack in Yemen have been flown to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

On board the Navy destroyer Cole, recovery efforts continue for other victims of the blast while FBI agents and demolitions experts launch a full-scale investigation into the bombing.

CNN military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon with the latest on all of this.

Good morning, Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

The death toll is at 17, and 10 of those bodies are still caught in the twisted wreckage of the USS Cole in port in Aden.

Today, a Navy team of 22 engineering specialists has arrived with 10 tons of equipment to begin trying to get those remains out of the damaged side of that USS destroyer. The Pentagon says that the task ahead is quite formidable because of the amount of damage especially to the mess deck that was pushed up into another part of the ship. That's apparently where many of the remains are at this time.

The U.S. is also strongly disputing contentions by various government officials in Yemen that the blast was on the ship, that it was internal to the ship. They say all of the evidence points to the fact that this was a terrorist attack from a small boat that pulled up alongside the USS Cole while it was in harbor there.

According to the scenario that the Pentagon remains convinced happened, the small boat pulled upside. Four or five-hundred pounds, perhaps more, of high explosives blasting a hole in the side of the hull.

The Pentagon is making tentative plans to bring the USS Cole back to Norfolk for repairs. In order to do that, it's contracted a huge salvage ship called the Blue Marlin. This ship is specially designed to be able to carry large ships. You can see a picture of it there. It has a 580-foot, four-foot long deck on which the warship USS Cole can be placed. The Cole is about 505 feet long. The way this boat works is this ship actually goes underneath the -- will go underneath the Cole. It will be backed onto the ship because of a big sonar dome it has underneath on the bow side. And then it'll actually be lifted up and welded onto the ship for a trip back to Norfolk, which would take approximately 25 or 30 days or so. But that's the current plan. There are some complications. The water there in the port of Aden is not quite deep enough for this to take place. It'll have to move it slightly in order to do that. But those are the current plans to bring not just the survivors but also the ship itself back to Norfolk for repairs -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Jamie, the fact that the authorities there seem to be insisting that this was an accident sort of bespeaks of the Khobar Towers event in the sense that local authorities in Saudi Arabia were not very cooperative with the U.S. group there and that hampered the investigation. How much concern is there now that there's going to be a repeat of all that?

MCINTYRE: Well, the Pentagon has made several public statements to the effect that the government of Yemen has been quite cooperative. But privately, there are concerns about the level of cooperation partly because the government in Yemen is not a strong central government that has control over every part of the country and partly because of the natural inclination of the country as in the case of Saudi Arabia.

Not to really want to believe that there was a terrorist attack on its soil, the president of Yemen made a statement that he thought the explosion took place on board the Cole, and that really got picked up by the press and became sort of the belief in Yemen. Many people believed that it wasn't a terrorist attack. But the U.S. is strongly disputing that saying all of the evidence clearly shows that this was an explosion that came from outside the ship.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon, thanks much.

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