[sacw] TRANSCRIPT: CBS-60 Minutes on Pakistan's nuclear weapons

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
Harsh Kapoor
(South Asians Against Nukes)
-----------------------------------

CBS News 60 MINUTES (7:00 PM ET)
Sunday, October 15, 2000

CO-HOSTS: Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Lesley
Stahl

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Don Hewitt

(Footage of Pakistani people; prime minister; General Pervez Musharraf;
man placing gun into back of pickup; Osama bin Laden)

STEVE KROFT: (Voiceover) Imagine a country with an arsenal of nuclear
bombs where the elected prime minister is in jail and the generals who
have taken power are beholden to Islamic radicals who revere Osama bin
Laden and hate the United States.

You know that the US State Department considers you to be a terrorist?

Mr. FAZLUR RAHMAN KHALIL: (Through Translator) Yes, I know the Americans
have declared me a terrorist.

KROFT: Do you support Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?

Mr. KHALIL: (Through Translator) Yes, of course. God has ordered us to
make nuclear weapons.

(Footage of Captain Rand Harrell; Harrell entering plane)

ED BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Captain Rand Harrell, who has been flying jets for
major commercial airlines for the past 20 years, says he and many pilots
are often so tired, they're not mentally fit to be in the cockpit.

Have you ever fallen asleep in the cockpit?

Captain RAND HARRELL (Pilot): Involuntarily? Yes.

BRADLEY: What's it like when you wake up from one of those?

HARRELL: It's quite frightening.

(Footage of Harrell; plane)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Like the time Captain Harrell says he fell asleep at
the controls while on approach to a major US airport with a plane full of
passengers.

(Footage of heavy machinery; construction site; Bud Shuster; Ann Eppard)

MIKE WALLACE: (Voiceover) Say your town needs a road or a bridge or
anything for that matter that can be built with federal funds. The man who
can make it happen is Representative Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania. Well,
not exactly. The man who can make it happen is a woman, Ann Eppard, who's
not only Bud Shuster's chief fund-raiser, she's also a lobbyist.

Unidentified Man: Essentially you put some money into Ann Eppard's bank
account, and out comes a provision in the Bud Shuster bill.

Mr. SCOTT HARSHBARGER: This kind of conduct is viewed as legal only on
Capitol Hill.

WALLACE: I'm Mike Wallace.

MORLEY SAFER: I'm Morley Safer.

BRADLEY: I'm Ed Bradley.

KROFT: I'm Steve Kroft.

LESLEY STAHL: I'm Lesley Stahl. Those stories and Andy Rooney tonight on
60 MINUTES.

(Announcements)

o o o o o

CBS News
60 MINUTES (7:00 PM ET)
Sunday, October 15, 2000

Running time: 12 minutes
Transcript: 2,673 words

America's Worst Nightmare?

Co-host/correspondent: Steve Kroft
Producer: Leslie Cockburn

STEVE KROFT, co-host:

The turmoil in the Middle East this past week has demonstrated once again
that peace is a fragile commodity and that terrorism is still a threat to
US security. But the Middle East is not the only place that bears
watching. Imagine a country with nuclear weapons where the elected prime
minister is in jail and the generals who seized power are beholden to
Islamic radicals who revere the terrorist Osama bin Laden. The country is
Pakistan, now competing for the title of America's worst nightmare.
Currently engaged in a nuclear standoff with its next-door neighbor India,
Pakistan is nearly bankrupt and sliding into anarchy. There is no other
country in the world where 100,000 well-armed militant fundamentalists
could end up controlling nuclear weapons--what some people call the
Islamic bomb.

(Footage of Pakistan; Muslims; Pakistani people)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Pakistan was created just over 50 years ago as an
Islamic state, a haven for India's Muslims who wanted self-rule. Today the
country is coming apart at the seams.

Pakistan is dead broke, its treasury looted by previous governments, its
economy drained by institutional corruption. Only about 1 percent of the
people here pay any taxes and those who do pay taxes are not the richest
people in the country. To make matters worse, the political and business
elite has borrowed billions of dollars from Pakistani banks with no
intention of ever repaying the loans.

(Footage of Pakistani people; weapons of mass destruction; Pakistan
countryside)

KROFT: (Voiceover) There are 140 million people, more than half of them
illiterate, with no access to clean water. But for such a poor country, it
has very sophisticated weapons, many supplied by the United States, at
least until Pakistan tested its first nuclear bomb and the US cut off all
aid.

(Footage of warning sign)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Just a few miles down the road from the capital of
Islamabad, there is a stark warning to foreigners that they will be thrown
into jail if they approach a secret installation called Kahuta, part of
Pakistan's nuclear weapons complex.

(Footage of satellite imagery of Kahuta; Pike and Kroft talking)

Mr. JOHN PIKE (Federation of American Scientists): (Voiceover) If you know
where to look, you can basically see the fence line.

KROFT: (Voiceover) But with the latest satellite imagery, John Pike, from
a group called the Federation of American Scientists, has been able to
analyze Pakistan's weapons program from his computer in Washington.

What is this right here?

(Footage of satellite imagery of Khushab)

Mr. PIKE: (Voiceover) This is the plutonium production reactor at Khushab
which was constructed with Chinese assistance.

(Footage of Pike and Kroft talking; satellite imagery photos)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Pakistan claims it built the bomb in self-defense, to
keep the Indian army from invading its borders. John Pike says the
country's nuclear program is much further along than Washington has
publicly acknowledged.

Mr. PIKE: In addition to building uranium bombs within the last few years,
they've also gotten into the long-range ballistic missile business.

(Footage of satellite imagery photos)

KROFT: (Voiceover) The missile technology originally came from the Chinese
and the North Koreans, but the Pakistanis are now building their own
missiles which are capable of reaching every major city in India.

How many bombs do you think they have?

Mr. PIKE: It's difficult to say how many bombs Pakistan currently has. A
good estimate would probably be around 25, 35, something like that,
certainly enough to fight a major nuclear war.

(Footage of General Pervez Musharraf and Kroft talking; General Musharraf
with other military personnel)

KROFT: (Voiceover) The man in charge of those weapons is Pakistan's new
chief executive, General Pervez Musharraf, who took over the country last
October in a military coup.

You're proud of your nuclear weapons.

General PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: I am, certainly, for Pakistan's sake.

KROFT: Under what circumstances would you use them?

Gen. MUSHARRAF: I would never like to use them, first of all, but if
you--you've asked me a direct question when would I use them, it woul--I
think if Pakistan's security gets jeopardized, then only the--one would
like to think of it.

KROFT: How secure are those nuclear weapons?

Gen. MUSHARRAF: Very secure. The national command authority is in place.
And they are extremely secure. And this is my guarantee.

(Footage of Pakistani government building; Nawaz Sharif; ancient Moghul
fort; village)

KROFT: (Voiceover) The weapons may be secure, but Pakistan's political
leadership is not. The last leader to give his guarantee was Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, now serving a double life sentence for terrorism
imprisoned in an ancient Moghul fort. Among the crimes Sharif is accused
of are trying to kill General Musharraf and bankrupting the country.

Gen. MUSHARRAF: I was very sure that people of Pakistan were fed up of
what was going on. They were fed up, simply fed up.

(Footage of Pakistani people; personnel)

KROFT: (Voiceover) If Musharraf fails to restore confidence in the
crumbling state, there is widespread fear that the country and its nuclear
weapons could fall into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists, one of the
few cohesive forces left in the country.

(Footage of Pakistani people worshipping)

KROFT: (Voiceover) With Pakistan's institutions on the verge of collapse,
the job of educating the country's poor has fallen to religious extremists
whose main desire is to see a united Muslim nation stretching from
Pakistan to the former Soviet republics.

There is a great deal of concern in the United States about the
possibility, if you fail, of the country falling into the hands of
religious fanatics...

Gen. MUSHARRAF: OK.

KROFT: ...who will have access to...

Gen. MUSHARRAF: To--to bombs and to our nuclear--OK. I--I don't think that
is--that is going to take place. Never has a religious party won seats in
our assemblies, never. Pakistan is a very moderate Islamic country, and I
mean it.

(Footage of Pakistani people; religious school; Samiul Haq and Kroft
talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) But the most radical religious parties no longer
believe in elections. They've said publicly they want a full-scale Islamic
revolution in Pakistan. This is one of more than 4,000 Madrosses or
religious schools that now dot the Pakistani countryside. This one is run
by Samiul Haq, one of the most revered and radical leaders in Pakistan.

There are people in the United States that say that it's not a healthy
situation to have religious leaders so close to a nuclear bomb.

Mr. SAMIUL HAQ: (Through Translator) We were hurt when we heard this term,
'the Islamic bomb.' If we religious leaders have nuclear bombs on our
hands, it would promote peace and security in the region.

(Footage of Haq with others; Kroft with others; from religious school)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Haq's followers espouse causes like the death penalty
for blaspheme, stoning for adultery, forbidding women from working and
banning television. His son showed us around and introduced us to some of
the 2,500 students.

How old are these boys?

Unidentified Man: These are between 7 and 10.

(Footage of Kroft with others; from religious school)

KROFT: (Voiceover) The money to run this and other Madrosses pours in
front Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. There are new dorms for 3,000
students, even a computer room.

What do you use the computers for?

Unidentified Man: We believe new technology.

(Footage of Kroft with others; tanks; of poster that says 'FBI Ten Most
Wanted Fugitive: Usama bin Laden'; bin Laden)

KROFT: (Voiceover) They also believe in the cause. Among the graduates are
90 percent of the leadership of the Taliban, the fundamentalist group that
now rules Afghanistan just down the road from Haq's school. Here they
openly lavish praise on Osama bin Laden, the man the US believes is
responsible for bombing two US embassies. It is Haq's graduates who are
now bin Laden's protectors.

How do you regard Osama bin Laden?

Mr. HAQ: (Through Translator) What do you think of Abraham Lincoln?

(Footage of Haq and Kroft talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) The United States is pressuring the Pakistani
government to shut down Samiul Haq's operation and rein in other extremist
groups around the country, but General Musharraf is in no position to do
so even if he wanted to.

Mr. HAQ: (Through Translator) If anyone even dares closing down these
schools in Pakistan, the government will be gone within days.

KROFT: How would you do it?

Mr. HAQ: (Through Translator) Our army is also a Muslim army. So if any
general tries to do this, the army will turn against him.

(Footage of military personnel)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Some of Musharraf's top generals are known to be
sympathetic to the fundamentalists. So any crackdown could bring down
Musharraf's government.

Mr. AMED RASHEED: There is considerable support for the Islamic parties
in--in the military.

(Footage of Rasheed and Kroft talking; Islamic militants)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Amed Rasheed is one of Pakistan's top journalists and a
leading authority on Islamic militants. He says somewhere between 60,000
and 100,000 Islamic militants have fought and trained in Afghanistan and
then returned home to Pakistan.

What kind of a political force are they within Pakistan?

Mr. RASHEED: Well, I think, you know, they are very powerful force. What
we're seeing is that if they want to bring government to a halt, they want
to bring the economy to a halt using their street power, they can
certainly do it.

KROFT: If push came to shove and the army was asked to crack down on the
fundamentalists, would they?

Mr. RASHEED: I don't see the army cracking down on the fundamentalists.

(Footage of General Anthony Zinni and Kroft talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) One person who has kept a close eye on all of this is
Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, the outgoing commander of US forces in
South Asia.

Isn't this really the first case where you've had nuclear weapons in the
hands of a government that was really politically unstable?

General ANTHONY ZINNI (Marine Corps): I think it is. My worry is that
Musharraf may be the--the last hope. We could have fundamentalists in
another fundamentalist state that looks like Iran. That could be dangerous
for obvious reasons, but we could have complete chaos. We could have
something that looks like Afghanistan.

KROFT: You could have in a few years nuclear weapons in Pakistan in the
hands of extremist religious leaders.

Gen. ZINNI: Oh, I believe that that's very possible.

(Footage of people arranging weaponry; Lashkar Etiba; weapon being set
off; building being shot at; people talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) What concerns General Zinni is the tens of thousands of
the Islamic militants are not only battle tested but well-armed. Although
we were forbidden to film, we managed to smuggle a hidden camera into this
200-acre compound belonging to the militant Islamic group called Lashkar
Etiba which armed, trained and sent Islamic soldiers off to wage holy war
in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. One of the group's leaders told us
his ideal recruit is a boy who has some money to contribute to the cause
and wants to die. 'Our strategy,' they told us, 'is to be martyred.'

(Footage of sign reading: 'Foreigners Please Stop Here'; border; military
personnel)

KROFT: (Voiceover) Right now, Lashkar fighters are waging a guerrilla war
against India, running what they call sure-shot suicide missions across
the line of control that divides Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, the border
province that is bitterly disputed and has already sparked two wars. To
get there, they must pass through a strictly controlled army zone where
all movement at the front is tracked from Pakistan army bunkers. The army
shows no signs of wanting to stop the Lashkar soldiers.

The view from Washington is that you've got tens of thousands of militants
in this country that are using Pakistan as a base to conduct military
operations in Afghanistan and in Kashmir and that they're doing it with
your support.

Gen. MUSHARRAF: There is no government sponsorship of any kind of military
activity either in Afghanistan or Kashmir. There's no such thing.

(Footage of people riding vehicle; countryside; people; Pakistani people)

KROFT: (Voiceover) But the most recent State Department report on
terrorism concludes otherwise. It says Pakistan's government has supported
groups that engage in violence in Kashmir, and it has provided indirect
support for terrorists in Afghanistan. It says the government has
tolerated terrorists living and moving freely within its territory.

(Footage of Fazlur Rahman Khalil and Kroft talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) In Islamabad, not far from General Musharraf's office,
we met with one of the militants singled out in the State Department
report, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, commander of a group called Harkot Omush
Adeen.

You know that the US State Department considers you to be a terrorist.

Mr. FAZLUR RAHMAN KHALIL: (Through Translator) Yes, I know the Americans
have declared me a terrorist.

KROFT: The Pakistani government knows that you're here, knows that you
live here in the country.

Mr. KHALIL: (Through Translator) Of course they know it. Why not?

KROFT: One of the reasons that the United States is so concerned about
this part of the world is because the fact that Pakistan has nuclear
weapons. Do you support Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?

Mr. KHALIL: (Through Translator) Yes, of course. God has ordered us to
make nuclear weapons.

(Footage of personnel; satellite video of attack; Khalil and Kroft
talking)

KROFT: (Voiceover) According to the US government, Khalil's group operates
terrorist training camps. In fact, some of his men were killed and injured
when the US launched a cruise missile attack against Osama bin Laden's
base camp in 1998. The State Department says Khalil has threatened to take
revenge by staging attacks against US targets in Pakistan.

Is the United States government trying to pressure the Pakistani
government to stop your activities?

Mr. KHALIL: (Through Translator) Yes, Americans are putting pressure on
Pakistan.

KROFT: If the Pakistani government tried to shut down your operations and
the operations of people like you, what do you think the reaction would be
of the Pakistani military?

Mr. KHALIL: (Through Translator) If it takes an unjust step against us, it
will not be in power for long.

(Footage of Pakistani people; Islamic militants)

KROFT: (Voiceover) So far, General Musharraf has not cracked down on any
leading Islamic militants.

There are people here that said the line between the military and some of
these militant groups is fuzzy. Are you confident that--that your military
is absolutely trustworthy?

Gen. MUSHARRAF: Yes, absolutely. This is not a--I'm very proud to say that
Pakistan is not a banana republic.

Gen. ZINNI: We don't need another failed state in the region. We don't
need another failed state with nuclear weapons. We don't need a--a state
that--that could end up--end up in a nuclear war with the Indians. So I
think it's what could happen to Pakistan if Musharraf fails.

KROFT: General Zinni believes the United States should do what it can to
shore up General Musharraf's regime. He suggests dropping some of the
sanctions now in place against Pakistan, and he supports providing
economic assistance through the International Monetary Fund. Others in the
administration are more cautious. They say Musharraf is not fully in
control of his generals and that supplying him with aid that could find
its way to the militants might come back to haunt the United States.

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o o o o o

Bio of Steve Kroft

Steve Kroft was named a co-editor of 60 Minutes in May 1989 and delivered
his first report that fall. This is his 11th season on the broadcast and
his 20th year as a CBS News correspondent.

In 1998, two of his 60 Minutes reports were honored with a George Foster
Peabody Award: "Veronica Guerin," a piece about an Irish reporter gunned
down by drug dealers, and "West Side Story," an uplifting story about
racial tension turned into racial harmony.

It was the second time he has been honored with a Peabody award. The first
was in l992 for his 60 Minutes report "Friendly Fire," about a Gulf War
incident that explored the tragic yet common issue of soldiers
accidentally killing their own men.

In 1996, Kroft's report "The Worst Nightmare" was the first to document
the involvement of the Russian mafia in the smuggling of nuclear materials
out of the former Soviet Union. The story won the prestigious Renner Award
for reporting on organized crime, awarded by the Association of
Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

In 1994, Kroft was honored with two of his six Emmy Awards. One was for a
profile of Senator Bob Dole and the other for a report on the Cuban
government's policy of quarantining people infected with the AIDS virus.

In 1992, his exclusive interview with then Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife,
Hillary, was reported on the front page of virtually every newspaper in
the country, and continues to be cited as a defining moment of that
presidential election.

Two of Kroft's most significant reports have been about Chernobyl. In
1990, he was the first American journalist to be given extensive access
the contaminated nuclear power complex in Ukraine. That report also won an
Emmy for special achievement in broadcasting. Kroft returned to Chernobyl
in 1994 and became the first American reporter to actually enter the
crippled reactor building.

Other memorable 60 Minutes stories include: an undercover investigation on
the rolling back of odometers by car wholesalers in Houston, which
triggered a federal grand jury investigation that resulted in five
convictions; the only television interview with Woody Allen during his
bitter custody battle with Mia Farrow; a report on alleged jury tampering
in the O.J. Simpson murder case; and his investigation, with producer
Lowell Bergman, of Saddam Hussein's hidden financial assets, estimated in
the billions of dollars, which attracted worldwide attention.

Before joining 60 Minutes, Kroft was a principal correspondent on the CBS
News magazine West 57th. Before that, he was a foreign correspondent for
CBS News based in the London bureau, a period during which he covered
international terrorism in Europe and the Middle East, including the TWA
hijacking in Beirut, the massacres at the Rome and Vienna airports by the
Abu Nidal terrorist cell, and the Achille Lauro hijacking.

He has also covered the war in Beirut and the sectarian violence in
Northern Ireland. His report on the assassination of Indira Gandhi for the
CBS Evening News with Dan Rather won an Emmy Award.

Prior to his assignment in London, Kroft was a correspondent in the CBS
News Miami bureau (1983) and traveled extensively in Latin America and the
Caribbean. During that time, he covered the civil war in El Salvador and
the U.S. invasion of Grenada.

Kroft joined CBS News in January 1980 as a reporter in the Northeast
bureau in New York. He was named a correspondent in May 1981 and worked
out of the Dallas bureau (January 1981- May 1983).

Before joining CBS News, Kroft worked as a reporter for WPLG-TV Miami,
WJXT-TV Jacksonville, Fla., and WSYR-TV Syracuse, N.Y.

He was born Aug 22, 1945 in Kokomo, Ind. He was graduated from Syracuse
University in 1967 with a bachelor of science degree, and was honored by
that institution in 1992 with the George Arents Medal, the highest honor
the university gives to an alumnus. Kroft earned a master's degree from
the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and received an
honorary doctorate of humane letters from Indiana University. He served
with the United States Army in Vietnam as a correspondent and photographer
for Pacific Stars and Stripes.

Kroft is married to journalist Jennet Conant. They live in New York with
their son, John Conant Kroft.

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