Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=3/11/03

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE= LAIRD ANDERSON

NUMBER=3-582

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=

INTERNET=

/// EDITORS: THIS INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE IN DALET UNDER SOD/ENGLISH NEWS NOW INTERVIEWS IN THE FOLDER FOR TODAY OR YESTERDAY ///

OPEN: Published reports suggest British and U-S Special Forces may already be at work inside Iraq helping to pave the way for a U.S.-led invasion...if one is ordered. Laird Anderson is a retired U.S. Army colonel and Special Forces officer. And he tells News Now's Tom Crosby the presence of Special Forces working inside Iraq represents a sound tactical decision:

MR. ANDERSON: Of course it should be expected, and I would be shocked if people thought otherwise. I would be shocked to think that they haven't been operating for many days at this pace. These are our elite troops, and they know what they're doing. And they're carving out, I think, the airfields that we're going to have to have occupied and maybe the areas where they have the oil going and things like that. So, yes, they're operating out there right now.

MR. CROSBY: One has to think, too, they're probably securing bridgeheads as well.

MR. ANDERSON: I would think so, although I don't know where the bridgeheads are. But I imagine that they're trying to carve out as many areas of occupation or potential occupation that we're going to have to go into. And so, yes, I think they're carving out those. But I think their work is more subtle, Tom. And I think that they really are being very, very particular about what they're going to be doing and whether or not they're going to be caught in advance.

MR. CROSBY: There is a ticklish situation, though, in this, isn't there, in that we still have diplomatic negotiations ongoing all the while we may have these forces operating inside Iraq?

MR. ANDERSON: Yes, but I don't think that makes a lot of difference. Diplomacy was never shy of having covert operations going on while the diplomats talk. If there is anybody in the United Nations that doesn't think that we're getting prepared for war, they're crazy. I mean, we're going to go to war. The President has said as much. And so you do everything you can in advance in order to prepare for it. So, while diplomacy is going to continue to trickle on, it's not going to work. And so therefore we should be prepared as best we can.

MR. CROSBY: When we talk about being prepared, Laird, as a former special forces officer, what are these gentlemen prepared to do when they're in there? Technologically speaking, what have they got with them, do you think?

MR. ANDERSON: Well, it has been a long time since I was an operations officer, as a young man, but the still basic team is what they call the A-team, 12 men, two officers and 10 highly qualified noncommissioned officers, sergeants, who are prepared in medical work, in communication, in operations and explosives and everything else that goes with it. And that's what they're doing. They're probably training other troops right now. And that's what special forces was meant to do. They were meant to be the professors of the Army.

MR. CROSBY: Those professors could be teaching troops inside Iraq, perhaps dissident forces?

MR. ANDERSON: Absolutely, sure, the Kurds, dissidents, anybody else they can find and round up, and to train them in the art of warfare. That is what they're adapted to do. And, no doubt, all of them speak the language.

MR. CROSBY: And today's art of warfare, of course, includes a lot of highly technologically sophisticated material. I imagine they probably have computers and the like that are traveling with them.

MR. ANDERSON: Oh, yes. I can only imagine, from the days that I commanded an aid attachment, to what we had and what they've got right now. It's probably so computerized and so sophisticated that I certainly couldn't do any more of it.

MR. CROSBY: What would happen if one of these people were to fall into the hands of Iraqi soldiers at this point, do you think?

MR. ANDERSON: Who knows? They are so professional in everything they do, I don't think the Iraqis would get anything out of them at all. I just think that they would probably continue the march and be prepared to do anything they can do to escape and evade.

CLOSE: Military analyst and retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer Laird Anderson.

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