Interview With Christopher Christie; Liberian Looters on Rampage
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Saddam Hussein, is he reaching out again, this time not using his name? And, Arnold Schwarzenegger's big surprise, how billionaire Warren Buffett is boosting his chances. WOLF BLITZER REPORTS starts right now.</s>BLITZER (voice-over): The shoulder-fired missile threat and now the suspect's apparent motive.</s>CHRISTOPHER CHRISTIE, U.S. ATTY., DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY: ...referred to Americans as bastards.</s>BLITZER: I'll speak live with the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. A flying target, how much of a threat these weapons pose to commercial airliners, and a dramatic step by British Airways to counter security lapses. A Baghdad neighborhood rebels, what provoked a rage of thousands against U.S. forces? And, Liberian looters on the rampage, are the peacekeepers too late?</s>BLITZER: It's Wednesday, August 13, 2003. Hello from New York, I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting. Prosecutors say he called Osama bin Laden a hero, referred to Americans as bastards, and praised the September 11 attacks. The British man charged with smuggling a surface-to-air missile into the United States for a terror attack appeared in court today. CNN's Jeanne Meserve has the latest on the story.</s>CHRISTIE: This morning the terrorist who threatened America lost an ally in their quest to kill our citizens.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hemant Lakhani was charged in a Newark, New Jersey courtroom with attempting to provide material support to terrorists by allegedly selling a shoulder-fired missile. Prosecutors say Lakhani, described as a significant international arms dealer, offered the missile to an FBI informant who posed as a representative of a Somali group wanting to shoot down a U.S. commercial airliner. Government sources say U.S. law enforcement educated the informant about missiles and arms dealing to bolster his credibility. According to court documents, over a year and a half more than 150 of his conversations with Lakhani were recorded on audio and video tape. According to court documents, Lakhani says at one point the buyer wanted the missiles for the anniversary, presumed to be a reference to 9/11. Lakhani is described as willing, even eager to close the deal.</s>CHRISTIE: He, on many occasions in recorded conversations, referred to Americans as bastards, Osama bin Laden as a hero who had done something right and set the Americans straight.</s>MESERVE: Government sources say the U.S. paid for the dummy SA- 18 shoulder-fired missile, which Russian undercover agents provided to Lakhani. Lakhani wanted to broker the sale of 50 more and asked the Russians about obtaining multi-ton quantities of C4 plastic explosives as well, according to court documents. Two other men have been charged in connection with the money side of the transaction. Law enforcement hopes these arrests will lead to others.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we're always looking to develop further information, continue on with the case. A case like this, a major transaction, law enforcement will analyze ever aspect of it.</s>MESERVE: Lakhani's lawyers have had no comment. Law enforcement is calling this an important case because of the international cooperation that helped crack it and the danger of the weapon involved but experts caution there are a lot more shoulder-fired missiles, arms dealers, and potential buyers out there -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Jeanne Meserve in Washington, thanks very much. Christopher Christie is the United States attorney for New Jersey. He's joining me now here in New York to talk about the case. Thanks very much, Mr. Christie, for joining us. Is there any evidence that Hemant Lakhani was involved with al Qaeda in the past?</s>CHRISTIE: No, Wolf. There's no direct evidence that Mr. Lakhani had any direct ties to al Qaeda but I'd like to caution that the investigation is continuing and we're continuing to work on this and other aspects of the case.</s>BLITZER: There's a report in "Newsweek" suggesting that there may have been a premature leak of all of this sting operation in London causing you guys to go ahead and arrest him, although some officials at the Justice Department supposedly had hoped you could have turned Lakhani and made him a witness and, in fact, get him to work for the U.S. What do you make of that story?</s>CHRISTIE: I don't make much of it. I think everything went according to the plan that we had been laying out over a long period of time. This investigation has gone on for 18 months and yesterday we executed the plan in almost exactly the way we laid it out.</s>BLITZER: So, where do you go from here? What kind of charges, what kind of prison sentence or worse is Mr. Lakhani expecting?</s>CHRISTIE: Well, Mr. Lakhani is facing up to a maximum of 25 years in jail and $1.25 million in fines so he's facing significant penalties in light of the charges that we filed against him today and where we go from here is to continue to work hard every day the way we've done over the last 18 months to try to make sure that we stop any of this activity from harming American citizens. That's our mission.</s>BLITZER: Based on what you know right now, and you obviously know a great deal, how vulnerable are U.S. commercial aircraft to these kinds of portable surface-to-air missiles?</s>CHRISTIE: You know, Wolf, I'm not an aviation expert so I can't really speak to that. What I can tell you is that law enforcement is aware of this kind of threat as well as all the other kind of threats that we face in this country right now. The president has said we're in an ongoing war on terrorism. He's right and today is a battle that has been won in that war but it doesn't mean the war is over. The war continues and we're going to get right back to work tomorrow morning.</s>BLITZER: This was a sting operation. There were these so-called money men involved. You heard Jeanne Meserve talk about them. You know their alleged roles in this as well. What exactly did they allegedly do and what kind of charges are they facing?</s>CHRISTIE: Well, they're both facing charges regarding conspiracy and illegal money remitting and what they did, the role they played, Mr. Abraham, as alleged in the criminal complaint was the person who accepted the first $30,000 deposit on the missile that was brought into the country yesterday and he then took care of making sure that money got to where Mr. Lakhani wanted it to get overseas. Mr. Hameed who was also -- filed a criminal complaint against him today, he was the person who was to receive, along with Mr. Abraham, the $500,000 deposit that they were expecting on the order for the next 50 of these IGLA shoulder-launched missiles and that was their role. But, as I said before, the investigation is continuing and I'm confident that we'll develop more out of this.</s>BLITZER: And, one final question on that "Newsweek" story, is there any evidence as far as you can tell, and obviously you're on top of this more than anyone else, that leaks to the news media whether in Britain or here in the United States compromised your investigation?</s>CHRISTIE: Absolutely not.</s>BLITZER: Christopher Christie, thanks very much for joining us.</s>CHRISTIE: It's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.</s>BLITZER: Thank you very much. There's other important news unfolding right now as well. No, no, no to America. That cry went out on the streets of Baghdad earlier today. A protest drew thousands of angry people who say American troops defiled a religious school and there's word of another letter, purportedly written by Saddam Hussein. CNN's Rym Brahimi is joining us now live from Baghdad with more -- Rym.</s>RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, well very interesting that those protests and people went out, 2,000, 3,000 people in this neighborhood previously known as Saddam City and what's interesting is that basically takes the challenge with regard to U.S. forces or U.S. presence here outside of the so-called Sunni Triangle.</s>BRAHIMI (voice-over): It began with a black flag at the top of a communications tower right in the heart of what was previously known as Saddam City, one of Baghdad's Shia neighborhoods the flag, a symbol for Muslim Shias of their loyalty to their faith. These pictures shot by an amateur cameraman show a U.S. military helicopter hovering over the tower and what eyewitnesses say is a U.S. soldier trying to remove the flag. Later, the helicopter moved away. The flag was still flying. A couple of people were then seen at the top of the tower, apparently waving their fists at the aircraft. In the street below the scene seemed to have triggered major agitation. Some climbed up the tower to add more flags, green and red, also typical of Shia Muslims loyalty to their faith and an Iraqi flag. The suburb where the incident happened is heavily populated, home to more than one-fifth of Baghdad's population. It's now known as (unintelligible) city. Events got out of control as scene on the videotape which shows angry crowds throwing objects at U.S. soldiers passing by in vehicles. In gunfire that followed, U.S. officials say one Iraqi died and four were wounded.</s>BRAHIMI: Now, what's interesting here, Wolf, is also what U.S. reaction there has been. On the one hand, a U.S. commander immediately wrote a letter to a cleric from that area apologizing for the incident. He doesn't go into details but he does apologize and offers to provide medical treatment for those people that have been wounded. He also offers to reduce the number of patrols by helicopter and by foot by U.S. troops there. But when we spoke to U.S. officials here, Wolf, well they didn't actually respond to the question what was that soldier doing with the flag from the helicopter? There's been no answer to that whatsoever. The only answer we've had until now is U.S. military officials saying the helicopter was just hovering above that area and the flag was blown down basically by the wind created by the helicopter blades -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Rym, what about this letter purportedly written by Saddam Hussein released over there. I guess Al-Jazeera released it. What do we know about this?</s>BRAHIMI: Well, all we know is that it's a letter that Al-Jazeera says came in the form of a reply to questions asked by a reporter by Al-Jazeera in written form so basically this person would have written a letter with questions to the former Iraqi president and the reply came. Al-Jazeera says it was in Saddam Hussein's handwriting, although it's not clear how they would be able to -- how anyone would be able to confirm that at this stage but what's interesting is that the former Iraqi president makes two points. On the one hand he praises a Shia Muslim cleric, Ayatollah Sistani for his stand with regard to the Americans. He says that he does well or his position is appreciated that he's not collaborating with U.S. occupation forces but he also calls on a jihad or a holy war as he sees it saying that it will unify the country -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Rym Brahimi in Baghdad thanks very much. The search for Saddam Hussein clearly will continue. For American troops in Iraq the death toll from hostile actions seems to be climbing every day. A soldier with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division was killed and another wounded today when their armored personnel carrier hit a roadside bomb. The incident happened on a road just north of Baghdad. Sixty American troops have been killed by hostile action since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1st. Some U.S. military families and veterans are stepping up their pledge to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. The group, Military Families Speak Out, launched a new national campaign today in Washington. It's called Bring Them Home Now.</s>NANCY LESSIN, MILITARY FAMILIES SPEAK OUT: George Bush said "Bring 'em on." We say "Bring Them Home Now." Bring them home because our troops should not have been in Iraq in the first place. Bring them home because there was no imminent danger to the United States. Bring them home because there was no weapons of mass destruction. Bring them home because there was no link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.</s>BLITZER: Unclear how many families this group does represent in this continuing debate here in the United States. Group leaders say the operation in Iraq does suffer from a lack of planning, lack of support and inadequate protection for Americans. U.S. military planners, of course, deny all of that. U.S. forces continue to monitor what's happening in Liberia, looting and pillaging in the streets of Monrovia, that's coming up, as U.S. Marines possibly prepare to move in. We'll go live to the Pentagon and to Monrovia. Plus, son of bin Laden is he trying to take his father's place? We'll take a much closer look at the terror family tree. And, get this, a marriage made in the heavens, I'll speak with a woman who tied the knot with a Russian cosmonaut in mid mission. First, though, the news quiz.</s>BLITZER (voice-over): Besides a wedding what other worldly event has taken place in space, birth, funeral, Bar Mitzvah, college graduation, the answer coming up.