Rumsfeld foresees 'treasure trove' of intelligence

By Robert Burns, Associated Press, 12/19/01

WASHINGTON -- At least two senior Taliban officials are in U.S. custody, defense officials said Wednesday as the search for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders continued in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said interrogations of Osama bin Laden loyalists captured in Pakistan in the past two days should yield a "treasure trove" of intelligence leads for the U.S. campaign to track down bin Laden and eradicate his al-Qaida terrorist network.

Defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two senior Taliban officials are among five prisoners held aboard the USS Peleliu, a Navy ship off the coast of Pakistan. Of the other three, one is an American who fought with the Taliban, one is an Australian associated with the Taliban and one is a Saudi Arabian official of a humanitarian organization accused of having terrorist ties.

The officials did not know the names of the two Taliban officials or their positions within the militia that ruled Afghanistan for five years until its collapse this month. The two apparently were captured in northern Afghanistan by the northern alliance of anti-Taliban forces, one official said.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld made no direct reference to the two Taliban officials, but when asked about the status of top Taliban figures, said, "We've got some of them." He did not say who they are or how many there are. The Taliban official most wanted by the United States is Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme Taliban leader who disappeared when Kandahar fell in early December.

Even though more than 100 al-Qaida fighters have been arrested by Pakistani authorities after fleeing from Afghanistan's Tora Bora region this week, and others are being hunted day and night by Afghan and U.S. forces, Rumsfeld said it was much too early to declare al-Qaida a defeated enemy.

"I would think that it would be a mistake to say that the al-Qaida is finished in Afghanistan at this stage," he told the news conference shortly after returning from a trip to Europe and Central Asia.

"They certainly aren't functioning well," he added. "They're running, and they're hiding, and they're having difficulty communicating with each other, but a large number of them seem to behave in a fanatical way, and I suspect that we'll hear more of them."

Rumsfeld said he did not know how many of the prisoners held by the Pakistanis are senior al-Qaida figures. He said they number in the hundreds, although Pakistan on Wednesday put the figure at 156.

"If they're al-Qaida ... you can be darned certain we're going to try to get our hands on them" for interrogations, Rumsfeld said.

"Clearly we will be involved in interrogations and intelligence gathering because it should be a treasure trove," he added.

Rumsfeld said U.S. forces are helping anti-Taliban Afghans clear caves "one by one" in the Tora Bora area, the last bastion of the al-Qaida before the group abandoned the area Monday. He said the work is slow and difficult, complicated by bad weather and darkness.

U.S. helicopters ran night missions Wednesday through Tora Bora's mountain valleys, and U.S. surveillance aircraft watched the area for signs of movement. Pentagon spokesman Richard McGraw said the United States was employing "whatever intelligence means" it can muster in the Tora Bora area.

Rumsfeld announced that U.S. Marines are expanding a detention center at the southern city of Kandahar's airport. Originally, the center was meant to hold as many as 300 al-Qaida or Taliban prisoners, but Rumsfeld said it would be expanded to a 500-person capacity.

Asked if Americans were pushing the search inside neighboring Pakistan to track al-Qaida fleeing there, Rumsfeld "all the heavy lifting" is being done by the Pakistani army, which he praised as effective.

Twenty prisoners so far have been handed over to the United States. Fifteen prisoners from the northern Afghanistan city Mazar-e-Sharif were turned over Tuesday to U.S. Marines at the newly created jail in Kandahar, where FBI agents familiar with the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks arrived to help with questioning.

From among thousands held by Afghan opposition forces, the 15 were picked "because we concluded, in conjunction with people holding them, that these were people who might have important information and might be themselves senior people," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.