Ken & Thread,
If you've got 'em smoke 'em.
Or,
Say, "Hello," to Willy Peter
Jerry in Omaha
How to Stage an Attack on Tora Bora
Kelly McCann
Wednesday, December 05, 2001
foxnews.com
This partial transcript of Special Report with Brit Hume, December 4, 2001 was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House.
BRIT HUME, HOST: The Pentagon says Northern Alliance fighters plan to attack Tora Bora, the northeast mountain stronghold of al Qaeda, where leader Usama bin Laden is thought, perhaps, to be hiding. The hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders is also taken place in the south. The U.S. Marines have set up an airfield just a week ago.
To explain how such an assault on a cave complex might be done, we turn to former special operations officer Major Kelly McCann, who is now head of his own security company, which is called...
KELLY MCCANN, FMR. SPECIAL OPS OFFICER: Crucible Security.
HUME: Crucible Security. So, what — this is obviously unusual.
MCCANN: Sure.
HUME: Difficult and dangerous work. Special operations forces, if they're in there with these particular Northern Alliance units that are trying to carry this out, what do you tell them? What do you have to be able to do here?
MCCANN: Messy, messy tactics. You know the old saying, if you want to learn something new, read an old book. You know, the other day I pulled out "FMFRP," which is a fleet Marine Force reference publication from the 1940s that the Marines wrote after doing cave warfare in Pelalu, places like that.
And it was actually quite detailed. And what they did, the way that they came to an answer was to pour diesel fuel into spaces that held up to 300, 400 Japanese. And then they'd introduce white phosphorous, ignite it, which created toxic fumes. Toxic gas would either suffocate the people in there or force them to escape into a catch team, a killing team. Or they'd burn. Even with that low degree of technology in the '40s, they figured it out.
The Northern Alliance is going to benefit from 30 years of technology since, you know — or more, 60 years now, of technology, that — we'll have thermal imaging, we'll have night vision capability. They'll have advisers. The Pentagon has stated that they do not want or see that Americans will be going inside of these caves.
So it will be kind of a cut up of old technology, old methodology, find the holes, fill it with smoke, drive them out, keep them from breathing. And you're going to have to clear space. I mean, you're going to have to go in there and engage the enemy. I think what you're going to see is...
HUME: When you say clear space, do you mean clear space outside and around, in the vicinity of the caves, or actually go into the caves?
MCCANN: Well, all of that. If you think of an objective, the first thing you want to do is create a safety envelope. And that safety envelope is the perimeter, if you will. Inside that perimeter, the assaulters would go into the assault. And then further inside that, into the actual space of the cave, that's where you'd actually go inside and do, you know, close combat, close with the enemy and destroy it.
The trick is mid-objective barricades, mid-objectives IEDs, or improvised explosive devices.
HUME: Now, we have a picture here. This is the graphics that the Times of London, one of our sister publications, developed, that make these appear to be — i0t looks like a split level house in there with many floors. Is that — I mean, that's a kind of cave that we're not accustomed to, I guess, to dealing with, is it? With all that stuff in there.
MCCANN: That's cavernous. But it's also akin to military operations in urban terrain, which we're well familiar with and very good at, and close quarter battles — the tactics, techniques, procedures for closed spaces. The only thing is with these graphics is, we don't know whose rendition of that is.
HUME: Is right.
MCCANN: Exactly.
HUME: I'm sure these are just educated guesses.
MCCANN: Sure. But it could be in the middle. It could be somewhere, hand-hewn rock, where it's been fractured and chipped away. And then again, industrial machinery could have been brought in and actually created large spaces. To house the number of people they're saying could be in there, obviously, they go on at some length.
So it will be a messy, no-clean-way-to-do-it tactic.
HUME: And other than pouring material in there and igniting it, I mean — I guess you can blow up the entrances to caves, but you haven't got any weapon that can actually penetrate, ride through the shaft and actually do anything — or do you?
MCCANN: There are different types of weapons. Some of the weapons that go to over pressure, like concussion grenades. The old concussion grenade is meant to kill. It produces a tremendous amount of over pressure, and concusses people to death.
HUME: So the air pressure is generated...
MCCANN: Exactly, is displaced so quickly. So you'll see that. But then they also have the best of all worlds, because there probably are not a lot of noncombatants in there. So I think that if the Northern Alliance does it, you'll see the use of frag grenades, regular old frag grenades. They won't be too concerned about noncombatants until people give up inside and say "OK, enough." And then maybe they'll deal with that. Hopefully, they'll deal with those prisoners better than they did at Mazar-e-Sharif.
HUME: Has the experience at Mazar-e-Sharif and what happened there, and the amount of time it took to get people out of an underground tunnel, given us any way to estimate the kind of time factor once — even if we even get close here and really know that there are al-Qaeda fighters — how long it may take to get them out of there?
MCCANN: No, but there was an indication of their training. And why I say that is, there was two al Qaeda members downstairs in the basement, the evening we watched the tape, I was on your show. And if you saw it, they wouldn't commit to going down in that room. Now, that's a simple — not simple, but it's a clearing exercise the U.S. military is very familiar with. Two men in a building, in a room, men know those tactics.
You saw that the Northern Alliance kind of hung around outside. They gave verbal commands, they asked them to come out. The other guy said no. They went around the side and threw a frag grenade in. So I think you're going to see a kind of non-ballet like assault into this thing. It's not — there's no easy way to do it.
HUME: And what kind of weapons are they likely to come up against when they go in there?
MCCANN: Small arms. They're obviously going to come up against AKs. But the big question...
HUME: Booby traps too?
MCCANN: Oh, absolutely. I would imagine there will be mid-objective barricades, mid-objective improvised explosive devices. But most importantly, based on the information or disinformation — don't know — that was found in some of the other objectives, do they have the capability of allowing a low tech bug or gas?
Sarin — even chlorine gas, in confined spaces, if we blew it out towards the troops, it could suffocate. It might not kill, but it could certainly impede progress. It would then make the Northern Alliance have to wear gas masks, something that they're not used to. They don't train in that.
So you know, it's kind of like wrestling a pig in the mud, you know what I'm saying?
HUME: Right. Now, let's talk about this for a second to get your impressions about the case of this one guy, John Walker, A.K.A...
MCCANN: Abdul Hamid.
HUME: To a military man like you, what's your gut reaction to a guy like that? I mean, he seems to have been a young, impressionable and perhaps, highly imaginative young man. But what about him?
MCCANN: That stopped mattering when he pointed a rifle. Bottom line is, it's like mathematics. You know, I'm a father myself, and I can only imagine the heartbreak of his dad, for a lot of different reasons.
However, let's get some of the parents of the guys who are over there fighting right now who are of the same age on the U.S. side, and let's hear what they have to say about it. I think you'll find that, you know, it's kind of like you're cut of one cloth and then you wear that cloth — good, bad or indifferent.
So I think he's triable, and I think it was reprehensible what he did. I'm sorry for his parents. But you make your bed, now he's lying in it.
HUME: Major Tom McCann, it's always a pleasure to have you. Thanks very much.
MCCANN: Thank you.
HUME: Wish you well, my friend. |
