60 Minutes II

<i>60 Minutes II</i> To Air Al Qaida Video

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 15, 2002 / 9:56 AM EST / CBS

CBS News has obtained a videotape that shows followers of Osama bin Laden training for terrorist attacks across the world.

The tape is scheduled to debut on Wednesday's edition of "60 Minutes II ," but details are being reported by Anchor Dan Rather on the Evening News. 60 Minutes II begins at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The new videotape shows al Qaida terrorists training for assassinations aand hostage taking. It is the latest tape to surface since those videos featuring bin Laden and his "smoking gun" statements on the Sept. 11 attacks.

The videotape apparently shows Islamic militants rehearsing an attack at a golf tournament and an assassination in Saudi Arabia. Running for more than six hours, it shows al-Qaida members practicing hostage-taking scenarios and assassinations including dangling a hostage off the edge of a roof, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which also is in possession of the tape.

The tape shows about 30 unmasked recruits and many more with masks. A Green Beret source told Rather the exercises are similar to those practiced by special commando units in the U.S., Israeli and British military.

To stop al Qaida from carrying out new attacks, U.S. war planes bombed a suspected "regrouping" site in the Zawar Kili area near Pakistan.

"We leveled the remaining structures on the surface ... and closed the caves. It is now time to look elsewhere," said Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Stufflebeam.

It was time to look elsewhere because forces on the ground found no enemy fighters. But they discovered more documents and other intelligence as they did in Tora Bora, another jackpot of information that could telegraph al Qaida's next move.

In Cuba, 30 more war prisoners landed successfully at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo - called "Camp X-Ray." The detainees were searched and cleaned before being moved into their cage-like cells.

The fighters in custody at Guantanamo will undergo intense questioning by investigators seeking information on future terror attacks and on the whereabouts of bin Laden. The latest videotape will only add more urgency to the mission of gathering intelligence.