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CNN SUNDAY MORNING
Interview With Jim Walsh
Aired March 2, 2003 - 10:13 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Three suspected al Qaeda members, including a top lieutenant now in U.S. custody. What's the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed mean for the overall war on terrorism and the threatening war on Iraq? To help answer some of these questions, we're joined by Jim Walsh of Harvard University. His research focuses on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism in the Middle East and he's here with me right now in Atlanta.
Good to see you.
JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good to see you, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, what should the expectations be about Mohammed's arrest? Might he help divulge some information to lead to other big arrests?
WALSH: Well, that is the big question and I think the answer is it might be the case. In the past, when they've arrested senior al Qaeda operatives, the expectation has been that they would not talk. But over time, it does seem as if foreign or American intelligence agents have been able to get information out of them. So we should remain hopeful about that prospect, but it's going to be difficult.
WHITFIELD: And to help get some of that information they've taken him out of the area of Pakistan. Might that help, you know, the surroundings about this interview or interrogation? Might that help to get the kind of information they need?
WALSH: Well, I think the key issue on location, where they take him is the fact that they're not going to bring him back to the U.S., they're not going to take him to Guantanamo and...
WHITFIELD: That would be risky, wouldn't it?
WALSH: Well, it would be -- it might be risky, but I think the real reason is a legal reason because American and other foreign officials have much more leeway in the forms of interrogation they use and the aggressiveness and intrusiveness of that interrogation. So they can do things in foreign countries, they wouldn't be able to do on U.S. soil. So my expectation is that they will interrogate him very aggressively.
WHITFIELD: Might it be presumed that if you have the No. 3 man there and a number of the 400 arrests that have taken place of al Qaeda members in the Pakistan region, that it's likely that Osama bin Laden and other top lieutenants just might be in Pakistan as well or nearby?
WALSH: Well, Fredricka, that's what I think. In principle, he could be anywhere, but it was not only the timing of the arrest, which I think was important, on the eve of what will probably be al Qaeda operations to coincide with the Iraq war, but the location of the arrest, in Pakistan where we've caught other senior al Qaeda number members and in the home of a senior political figure in Pakistan. So I think Pakistan, the frontier board, Afghanistan, that those are the most likely places.
WHITFIELD: You talk about the timing, this going on. This arrest taking place just when there are an awful lot of critics who said, "How dare the White House even consider yet another war when the war on terrorism isn't complete?" So this certainly is now a feather in the cap for the White House, isn't it, on several levels?
WALSH: Well, I think that's right. I think it strengthens their claims they can do -- go after the war on terrorism and go after Saddam at the same time. But I'm not sure that that argument holds up under scrutiny. It requires the full attention. We have not entered the war in Iraq. I can tell you that once an American soldier starts -- sets foot in Iraq, Special Forces aside, who are probably already there, and once the bombs start dropping, America's attention will be on the war. The president's attention, necessarily by definition, will focus first and foremost on the war in Iraq when it starts. Then, we'll see the test of whether we can do two things at the same time.
WHITFIELD: And while we talk about the focus of war if indeed there is a war, part of the problem now with Turkey saying or at least the parliament voting against the U.S. installations in that region, it presents now a new problem, doesn't it?
WALSH: Absolutely. It does present an interesting problem. Of course, the U.S. has anticipated that there might be problems with Turkey. They're trying to -- they have contingency plans to work around that, but obviously it's in the U.S.' best interest from an operation standpoint to have Turkey as an entry point. I think that this is a process that will continue to go on and at the end of day they'll get what they need.
WHITFIELD: That Turkey has taken this position and it certainly is appeasing the 90 percent of Turkish people who have said, "We are opposed to the war," in addition to the fact that the same weekend the United Arab Emirates now says --this is the first Arab nation to say, "Saddam Hussein, it's time for you to step down." Is this an indicator that perhaps the Arab nations now are being more emboldened now to take a stance on this anti-war approach now collectively...
WALSH: Well, I think there's always been a...
WHITFIELD: ... by giving options?
WALSH: Yes, and -- well, we have also had the Saudis talking privately, arguing that for exile, trying to facilitate exile by Saddam to another country. There's always been a split between the leadership in the Muslim and Arab world and Arab on the street, the famous phrase that everyone uses. I think a lot of the leaders of the states in the region don't like Saddam. They don't like having been invaded in the past. They feel threatened by his weapons of mass destruction. They're no big fan, but they've got a population under them that sees American intentions and American actions in a very different light and they're trying to, you know, try to maintain a balance between those two things.
So I think that one of the issues here, obviously, is they're not democracies, you know. They're monarchies. They're army-run dictatorships in a lot of cases, so they're able to keep their population in line. But there is this tension and that tension will increase once there is fighting in the region. I think you'll see the leaders of that region trying to hold on to their people and still try to help the U.S. at the same time.
WHITFIELD: All right, Jim, good to see you and thanks for touching on all of that because through all these moving parts, somehow you connect the dots and it's all still connected.
WALSH: It's tough though.
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks a lot, Jim.
WALSH: Thank you.
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