Transcript: Jane Wallace Interviews Seymour Hersh
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_hersh.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_hersh.html
JANE WALLACE: Let's talk about Konduz. During the war with Afghanistan--
SY HERSH: Great story.
JANE WALLACE: -- you reported that during a key battle our side in that battle had the enemy surrounded. There were a reported perhaps 8,000 enemy forces in there.
SY HERSH: Maybe even more. But certainly minimum that many.
JANE WALLACE: It's your story, take it.
SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near ... it's one little village and it's a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly-- through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very...
We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz-- the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to-- the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that's how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn't do it that day.
JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.
SY HERSH: They're whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.
JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they're told to back off--
SY HERSH: From a certain area--
JANE WALLACE: -- and let planes fly out to Pakistan.
SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more-- or more heavily weighted-- Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated-- no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only-- Al Qaeda but they were also-- you see the Pakistani ISI was-- the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.
And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.
JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?
SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized ? Donald Rumsfeld who ? we'll talk about what he said later ? it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level.
JANE WALLACE: The Department of Defense said to us that they were not involved and that they don't have any knowledge of that operation.
SY HERSH: That's what Rumsfeld said when they asked him but it. And he said, "Gee, really?" He said, "News to me." Which is not a denial, it's sort of interesting. You know,
JANE WALLACE: What did we do that? Why we would put our special forces guys on the ground, surround the enemy, and then-- fly him out?
SY HERSH: With al Qaeda.
JANE WALLACE: With al Qaeda. Why would we do that, assuming your story is true?
SY HERSH: We did it because the ISI asked us to do so.
JANE WALLACE: Pakistani intelligence.
SY HERSH: Absolutely.
JANE WALLACE: Yeah.
SY HERSH: Yeah. That's why. You asked why. Because we believe Musharraf was under pressure to protect the military men of ? the intelligence people from the military, ISI, that were in the field. The Pakistanis were training the Taliban, and were training al Qaeda.
When the war began, even though this is-- again, you know, this is complicated. Musharraf asked, as a favor, to protect his position. If we suddenly seized, in in the field, a few dozen military soldiers, including generals, and put them in jail, and punished them, he would be under tremendous pressure from the fundamentalists at home.
So, to protect him, we perceive that it's important to protect him, he asked us-- this is why when I tell you it comes at the level of Don Rumsfeld, it has to. I mean, it does. He asked-- he said, "You've got to protect me. You've got to get my people out."
The initial plan was to take out the Pakistani military. What happened is that they took out al Qaeda with them. And we had no way of stopping it. We lost control. Once there planes began to go, the Pakistanis began-- thousands of al Qaeda got out. And so-- we weren't able to stop it and screen it. The intent wasn't to let al Qaeda out. It was to protect the Pakistani military.
SY HERSH: What else can you do? We need the idea of some sort of country as a bulwark to what's going-- look, Afghanistan is smoking today. You know if you want another reality, the reality that nobody wants to hear about is that probably from Khandhar to Jalalabad and all of the southern part of Afghanistan is cowboy and Indian territory.
It's ISI. It's Taliban. It's Pashtun. Some al Qaeda. You know you don't find our troops-- a little bit in-- on the coast near-- you know in the north-- the northern territories. We're-- it's-- we have un-- we're-- we're really at square one even in Afghanistan.
JANE WALLACE: Okay, I'm gonna slow you down because you know your material very well. The northwestern part of Pakistan--
SY HERSH: Right.
JANE WALLACE: --that borders on Afghanistan now is where the-- the al Qaeda forces are said to be regrouped?
SY HERSH: Along with Kashmir. They probably are there too.
JANE WALLACE: Yes. This is where some of our American troops-- we have about 8,000 left in Afghanistan, are facing some of the heaviest fighting they've seen in a year.
SY HERSH: The forces that are seeing heavy fighting are a few special forces that are there and some elite units from the 82nd Airborne. Most of our troops are just guarding bases. But we have some elite units in contact. Yes.
JANE WALLACE: What you're saying is that then part of the forces our guys are facing are forces that are being supported by or intermixed with Pakistan intelligence which is a government we support. And al Qaeda, which is supported by a government we support. In other words we're doing battle with ourselves to some degree?
SY HERSH: I'll make it better. We have reason to think, from intelligence-- I haven't written this that-- that the Saudi's are financing some of this all the way.
JANE WALLACE: Financing what?
SY HERSH: Saudi's put a lot of money into Pakistan to religious aspects. I'm not saying the Saudi's necessarily-- the Saudi government knows that the money they're putting in is ending up supplying the forces that are in contact with our forces in the northern territories. But the fact is the Saudi's are still a supplier of a great deal of funds to Pakistan. We've got a country that's teetering on the edge, we don't want Pakistan to go Islamic. We don't want the weapons to get out of control.
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