U.S.

Sheehan: Let's Get The Taliban

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 22, 2000 / 8:16 AM EST / CBS

Several suspects in the bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole apparently fled to Afghanistan to hide out in that "haven of lawlessness," the State Department's counterterrorism chief said.

In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee, the official, Michael Sheehan, did not identify the "numerous people" who, he said, immediately left Yemen for Afghanistan after an explosives-laden skiff rammed the Cole in Aden harbor, killing 17 American sailors.

He told the subcommittee Wednesday he lacks "full information" on who planned and carried out the bombing plot in October.

"We do know," Sheehan said, "that numerous people immediately left Yemen for Afghanistan, the safe haven where they could hide out with little fear of Taliban intervention."

Sheehan promised an all-out diplomatic, political and economic pressure campaign to isolate Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia from the world community.

"The Taliban's control over most of Afghanistan has resulted in a haven of lawlessness, in which terrorists, drug traffickers and other criminals live with impunity," he said.

The United States and Russia already are trying to impose U.N. sanctions against the militia, which rules 95 percent of Afghanistan, for refusing to turn over expatriate Saudi terror suspect Osama bin Laden for prosecution in the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Sheehan named bin Laden and 10 other suspected terrorists who are sheltering in Afghanistan, training their forces there or being financed by the South Asian country.

The list "gets longer all the time," Sheehan said.

Yemeni sources in San`a, Yemen's capital, told The Associated Press that the most senior of six jailed suspects in the Cole attack have identified his prime contact as a man he met in Afghanistan.

The jailed suspect, Jamal al-Badawi, said Mohammed Omar al-Harazi, an ethnic Yemeni born in Saudi Arabia, telephoned him from the United Arab Emirates with instructions for the bombing.

The Afghan connection is one of the tenuous links Yemeni investigators have found between the group involved in the Cole attack and America's No. 1 terror suspect, Osama bin Laden, who also fought in Afghanistan.

U.S. law enforcement officials have said previously that several threads link the suspects now held by the Yemenis to the bin Laden organization.

Al-Badawi told investigators that al-Harazi never directly told him he was receiving orders and financing for the attack from bin Laden, but al-Harazi's tone and manner had led him to believe that was the case, the sources said. They told The Associated Press that al-Badawi had no independent confirmation of involvement by bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan.

Other suspects in the Cole attack were identified as two police officials from Lahej, just north of Aden: Walid al-Sourouri and Fatha Abdul Rahman. A source said the policemen provided fake dentification and other documents for the suicide bombers.

Yasser al-Azzani, also jailed in connection with the bombing, knew the suicide bombers well enough to play host to them at his Aden home for lunch the day before the attack, but it was unclear how much he knew about their plans, the sources said.

Al-Harazi is at large. Al-Badawi said they met in Afghanistan in the 1980s while fighting to drive out Soviet invaders.

Sheehan said Afghanistan has been at the heart of U.S. measures to counter terrorism.

Central to the U.S. campaign is the U.S.-Russian drive for sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. They would include embargoes on arms sales and the export of chemicals used to manufacture heroin. Sheehan said Afghanistan's opium crop accounts for 72 percent of the world's illicit opium, and cultivation of the crop is increasing.

The sanctions are intended to compel the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, who is alleged to have masterminded the attacks.

On other fronts, Sheehan said the United States was trying to rally support for Afghanistan's neighbors in fighting terrorism and the drug trade and is considering adding to the 29 foreign organizations designated as terrorist groups.

Also, Sheehan said, President Bill Clinton has asked the Senate to approve an international agreement designed to make it more difficult for terrorist groups to raise or transfer money.

Additionally, the State, Justice and Treasury departments and the FBI are developing training courses for foreign officials to help detect and curb terrorist fund raising. The courses will begin early next year, Sheehan said.

"We will continue to put political, diplomatic and economic pressure on the Taliban to make them realize that they will not be an accepted member of the international community until they comply with internationally accepted norms on terrorism," Sheehan said.

A year ago, the U.N. Security Council froze Afghan assets and imposed an embargo on the Ariana Afghan Airlines, controlled by Taliban.

Some humanitarian groups say the sanctions would make life more difficult for Afghanistan's poor. Sheehan denied that. Some in the United Nations also expressed worries about a potential backlash against aid workers in the country.

Afghans are suffering from the impact of 20 years of civil war and the worst drought in decades. Sheehan said, however, an explosion of poppy cultivation under the Taliban has reduced agricultural land available for food crops.

Meanwhile, the Cole completed its journey across the Atlantic. The vessel — transported piggyback-style aboard the Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship Blue Marlin — arrived shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, where it will be repaired. The ship was christened there in 1995.

A large tarp covered the hole, located amidships in the destroyer. At least 100 employees wearing hard hats worked alongside a huge crane that was pullig the vessel to the dock. The repairs will take about a year and cost roughly $240 million.

CBS News Correspondent Jim Krasula reports crowds lined the waterfront to greet the Cole as it made its way through the Pascagoula channel and finally arrived at its destination.

Many locals have a strong feeling for the destroyer. Ingalls carpenter B.C. Lee, who helped build the Cole, was on hand for the arrival.

"I hate to see it coming back in that shape," Lee said. "It makes me feel good the Navy chose us to repair it."