[Jeff Greenfield:] The new videotape from the group believed to have sponsored the September 11th attacks on America, with a new warning: The terror will not stop. That warning guaranteed to add more anxiety to a nation still unsettled by the attacks of a month ago. We're going to talk about what that attack might have done to America's traditional sense of confidence, but first, at about 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Al-Jazeera TV, the Qatar-based outlet that often airs tapes from the Taliban, broadcast a tape from Suliman Abu-Ghaith, threatening more attacks on the United States unless the United States changed its policies on the Middle East and Islam. Joining me to talk about this and about the prospects for America's recovery, two U.S. senators who share a common link: They are both decorated Vietnam combat veterans. And they share common responsibilities: Both are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Democrat John Kerry from Massachusetts. They join me from Washington. Senator Hagel, that tape didn't exactly assume responsibility for what happened, but sure didn't deny it. If al Qaeda is still is the group that the United States must pursue, tell us the link between the strikes in Afghanistan and trying to roll up a multinational terrorist organization.
[Sen. Chuck Hagel , Nebraska:] Jeff, the president laid it rather clearly a couple of weeks ago when he said that the al Qaeda network, obviously the centerpiece of what we are dealing with, is just but one part of this international conspiracy made up of radical fundamentalists that threaten Western civilization. And they are connected. And that's why the multifaceted, multipronged attack on terrorism is going to be required diplomatic tools, economic tools, humanitarian tools, military tools in this international coalition to go after it. And it will require a sustained commitment by all free nations of the world to destroy it. Eventually we will destroy it.
[Greenfield:] Senator Kerry, the U.S. says that it's not targeting Osama bin Laden. Why not?
[Sen. John Kerry , Massachusetts:] I think he's not specifically targeted in the context of a bomb being dropped at this moment in time. He is certainly a target and an objective of this entire mission, there's no question about that. But there's no expectation that these early days of military operations are going to get him except by happenstance. So he is not specifically targeted.
[Greenfield:] OK. Let's talk about beyond Afghanistan. President Bush said again today that the United States is not going to distinguish between terrorists and the nations that might harbor them. Your colleague, Senator McCain, went a lot further. Let me show you what he said. He said: "Iraq is the first country, but there are others Syria, Iran, Sudan who continue to harbor terrorist organizations and assist them. I believe invoking the U.N. Charter is the first step in preparing and I emphasize if necessary attacks on other countries that may continue to feel they can with impunity harbor terrorist organizations who continue to inflict acts of terror on Americans and our property." Senator Hagel, if we are serious about draining the swamp, doesn't that pretty much indicate that at some point we are going to have to attack not just Afghanistan but the nation states that harbor groups like al Qaeda and other groups?
[Hagel:] I think it's very important that we take this one step at a time, Jeff. There's a great amount that we don't yet know and understand about these networks. We must be very sensitive and careful not to get too far out front of ourselves. This is a phased, processed effort. This focus on the objective at hand, dealing with bin Laden, dealing with the center of the al Qaeda network being in Afghanistan, is where we are directing the international coalition focus. And that's appropriate. Beyond that, we have to be careful, because this international coalition is very fragile, and we need to keep that coalition together. Any further instability in the part of the world that we're in now, where we are focused the Middle East, Afghanistan, Central Asia is something that is not in our best interests. So there is much yet to be learned and understood, so I think we must be cautious that we take this one step at a time.
[Greenfield:] Senator Kerry, before we take a break, I want to ask you about something the president said today. He was once again quite exorcised by leaks coming out of the Congress, and he's made it clear he's going to limit what the administration tells to Congress. Is that an appropriate response to these leaks?
[Kerry:] Jeff, I'm outraged by the leaks, as are a lot of my colleagues. I mean, it's simply unacceptable for any United States senator to release classified information. It's essentially putting people at risk. It's a breach of the security interests of the United States. And a lot of us are deeply upset by it. But I think the president is overreacting. I mean, the fact is the administration also leaks at times. What was leaked was, in fact, stated on national television by Attorney General Ashcroft. And we're not able to function as a United States Senate: Certainly as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee or a member of the Intelligence Committee or Armed Services Committee, it's impossible to do your job and make the judgments we need to make as representatives of the American people with respect to this policy. So what the president has he's going to do simply will not work as a policy. It's imperative for us to find a balance in this. And I think our colleagues need to be reminded by the leadership and they certainly will be reminded by this warning from the president that the behavior is simply unacceptable, which is it is.
[Greenfield:] All right, we're going to take a break. And a little later in the broadcast, we're going to ask about that case of anthrax in Florida. But when we return, we're going to talk with Senators Kerry and Hagel about the country's sense of confidence in itself, in a minute. When Osama bin Laden said on his tape that America is filled with fear, millions must have wanted to say no. But there is no doubt that what happened a month ago goes beyond massive death and destruction, beyond human and economic loss. What we have also lost, at least for now, is that traditional American sense of ease. Just consider what's happened in the past week or so. October 2nd, concrete barriers surround Chicago Sear's Tower after a false report of a terrorist attack. The next day, Greyhound shuts down its entire service after a passenger slashes a driver. Six die in the crash. The day after that, a Russian airliner from Tel Aviv to Siberia explodes over the Black Sea. An accident? An attack? Yesterday, an American Airlines jet is escorted to Chicago's O'Hare Airport by two F-16 fighter jets after a mentally ill passenger rushes the cockpit. Also yesterday, Florida health officials say the anthrax exposure that killed a Florida man may well have been deliberate. Today, three Metro Rail stations in Washington, D.C. were shut down after reports that a passenger sprayed an unidentified liquid during a struggle with a police officer. That liquid is now suspected of being a cleaning solution. So what is all this doing to America's traditional sense of confidence and strength? Are there specific things the government needs to do, that we need to know and that we need to do? With us again from Washington, Senators John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. Senator Hagel, if every mentally ill airline passenger or every outraged airline passenger can bring an airplane back to an airport under F-16 escort, if a false rumor can shut down a metropolitan subway system, you can begin to see this this costs I don't even know how we can calculate it. How it seems to me that you could say that is in some ways as serious as what happened on September 11th. I mean, are you are you concerned with the long-term impact on the United States of that kind of behavior?
[Hagel:] Well, of course, we are all, Jeff. But it seems to me that we need to put a couple of things in perspective. One is the shock, the reality, the rawness of what happened just four weeks ago today is obviously still with us. And that means that it is with us cerebrally, intellectually, subconsciously. That high state of alert and concern has all of us and all of our institutions on a state of alert and an edge that we normally don't have nor is natural. We will find our center of gravity here. We will get our institutions in place. Our populations, our civilization, as we know it, will start to adjust. Doesn't mean we give up liberties. But there's no question: We're going to have to make some changes in policy and law enforcement, in everything we do, in our immigration laws, in our foreign policy, our sanctions, our trade, everything. And we'll get that back to a point where there is some perspective and some balance. Yes, we're concerned: We all are when we see these kinds of reaction, but I think it's fairly natural.
[Greenfield:] But Senator Kerry, it occurs to me that you and your colleagues in Washington, you know, you get a problem defined and you can pass a piece of legislation to try fix it. There's environment's threatened, you can pass a regulation. People are suffering, lack of civil rights, you can put in federal troops. This one is a dilemma that is literally in the minds and the spirits of 280 million people. What has the government got what can the government do about that kind of crisis?
[Kerry:] Well, Jeff, let me let me first of all, we can make a lot of decisions correctly and remain united in our collective will to respond to this. And we can offer the leadership that the nation needs and wants. The world now understands they're not denying guilt. They're not suggesting that this is a conspiracy, the United States against them. They are not they were great rumors all across the Arab world that Israel was behind this previously. So all of the Arab world, particularly the legitimate Muslim world, should take note that they are essentially accepting guilt and promising more. That puts completely to rest the notion of anyone else, of Israel or anything else. So the legitimate Muslim community has to now join in this global effort.
[Greenfield:] But forgive me, senator, but how does that help Americans?
[Kerry:] Well, I want to come back to that. I want to come back.
[Greenfield:] OK.
[Kerry:] I just I thought it was very important, Jeff. I'm not trying to I think it's really important, though, to make that point, because that offers us, I think, a unity globally that ought to give a sense of confidence to the American people about where we're heading. Now, the second things is there's a lot we can do. We can do the airport security and make it, you know, as strong as it possibly can be, travel security. There's much that we can do as we go forward in immigration, in the knowledge of who our neighbors are, and communities could be stronger in strengthening our health care response to any kind of crisis and give people a sense of confidence about this. I think, in addition to that, there is a real distinction, Jeff, between a sense of unease, as you've described it, and confidence about the ultimate outcome. I think Chuck and I and others have a great sense of confidence about the ultimate outcome, but we're going to have to go through some tough transitions here. We're going to have to face perhaps some difficult moments.
[Greenfield:] One of the...
[Kerry:] And...
[Greenfield:] I'm sorry, senator.
[Kerry:] No, go ahead.
[Greenfield:] Well, I just want to, because the time is short, I wanted to ask Senator Hagel one of the reasons we invited both you and John Kerry here is that you both experienced danger in a much more direct way than, God willing, most of us will ever know. In terms of the front lines, coming home, what can you tell us about emotionally surviving the front lines? Senator Hagel.
[Hagel:] One of the things it does, and I think to each of us and I think each American, probably each citizen of the world community, part of the world that appreciates the dignity of man is going through a self-analysis, a self-inventory. What's important in your life? What do you think is most important about who you are, your family, others? That's the first response, reaction at least I saw when I came home from Vietnam. I think others did. And I think America is going through that right now. And and we will find that, and that's good. I think that's very good. Sorry we had to go through what we had to go through to get there. But history is rather replete with these kinds of things. They come once or twice every 100 years. That's what's happening.
[Greenfield:] All right, Senator Kerry, when you hear people say, I'm stocking up on Cipro, when you know about people of great means saying, I've got my private jet parked on the runway, I'm getting in shape so I can run down flights of stairs, which literally a couple of people are saying, what's your response to that kind of an attempt to privatize security?
[Kerry:] Well, I think individuals are obviously going to respond that way. That historically has always been true. In every kind of crisis, Jeff, you know, in every war, certain people with certain access and certain means have, quote, "taken care of themselves." But I think the lessons of most of these confrontations are the kinds of lessons we learned in the streets of New York: firefighters rushing into a building, police officers giving their lives, countless numbers of volunteers coming forward, untold millions of dollars raised to help victims and respond. And I think if you look back across the history of our nation and other countries that have been under siege look at the blitz in Britain, look at the difficulties that Jews went through in the Holocaust and all through Europe and in history. I mean, if you read the tea leaves of history, they tell you that there is an incredible reserve of strength in citizens everywhere. The folks who founded this country, the difficulties of what I've just been reading John Adams, as many of us have this summer, and you see the despair in the founding fathers at one period of time as they lost battle after battle. And George Washington was driven, you know, away from New York and our objectives. But they staid at it. They understood there was a larger goal. Every American understands that goal here, and I believe we will ultimately persevere because of that and because of our, just the fundamentals of who we are.
[Greenfield:] Thank you very much, Senator John Kerry. Thank you very much, Senator Chuck Hagel. My thanks to both of you. When we come back, we're going to hear from Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist and author Bill Broad on what to fear, or maybe not fear, on that anthrax story in a minute. When we talk about what has unnerved America, nothing since the attack itself has been more unsettling than the stories of a possible anthrax attack in Florida. To talk about that and the greater threat, if there is one, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer William Broad of "The New York Times." He's co-author of "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War." Mr. Broad, let's turn to Florida. We've already heard that some of these stories turn out not to be true, the mysterious gift from an intern. What do we know? What do we not know?
[William Broad, "new York Times":] Well, we know that one person died from anthrax spores that he inhaled through his nose. We know that another guy had spores in his nose as well. He we don't know whether or not he was developing anthrax. He was put on antibiotics right away. So we know just really the beginning, just the inkling of a scientific detective story. We don't know that much.
[Greenfield:] But everything we've heard in the past about
[Broad:] No, no. This this sounds like if you can't rule out natural causes at this point. But it looks like crude bioterrorism. You know, somebody who sent something through the mail, somebody who doused something in the building. I mean, this is not your doomsday scenario, where you have crop-dusters coming down. Clearly, the federal authorities have checked and have OK'd the area outside the building. It's clean. The problem is in the building itself. You know, we've in the book that we've done, we write about crude bioterrorism. It happens. It happened in the United States in '84 and 700 Americans got knocked flat on their back. It's not that hard to do, to do a small incident like that.
[Greenfield:] Last Friday, "Nightline" did a fictional scenario of a bio-attack, and what their premise was a terrorist went into a subway with vials of jars of anthrax, threw it onto the tracks so that the jars broke. The subway trains then carried anthrax throughout all the subway system. That is that plausible?
[Broad:] That's that's a serious issue. That's something that the U.S. government studied very carefully in the '50s and '60s. They did tests in Manhattan. They went out and put germ simulants, you know, germ weapon mock germs that they put in the subway system and test for that kind of thing. It stirs up the air as the trains move, and that's an issue.
[Greenfield:] But the way, you mentioned 1984. Just to set some people's minds, I guess, at ease. What happened back then briefly?
[Broad:] It was an attack by a religious cult in Oregon. They spread salmonella germs on salad bars, devastatingly simple. People didn't die, but they some of them felt like they wish they had. You got incredibly sick. Many people went to the hospital, and it was done as a field trial for trying to sway a local election. These people, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, wanted to take over the county.
[Greenfield:] Let me ask you what I asked one of the senators about privatizing security. Are you stocking up on Cipro, you've got gas masks at home?
[Broad:] No, no, I don't. This is my strong feeling is that this is a case of collective security. We're going to sink or swim together, and the federal government as you may not love them for everything we've witnessed lately. But they're the ones that can do the stockpiling, they're the ones who can take the big-picture precautions. Cipro isn't going to save you. You're not if a germ attack occurs correctly, a widescale one, it will be stealthy. You know, we're going to have to rely, better or worse, on the government to come up with the big-picture answers on this.
[Greenfield:] Speaking of which, I'll ask this quickly, and if I can get a quick answer, that's great. Your big concern is smallpox, and I've heard people say and I've heard you and others well, why don't they just make a vaccine, hurry up and make it, and we'll all get vaccinated? I got vaccinated for smallpox. Why can't we all do it again?
[Broad:] Right. Right, right. They're working on it. They're making the vaccine. The problem is that one out of every about 13,000 people have complications. A few people die, you know, when you do large-scale vaccinating. So you want to be very careful. The smart thing that the government is doing is stockpiling this stuff, getting it in secret locations, having it ready in case there is an outbreak. It's very unlikely that there would be. I mean, most people judge that terrorists don't have their hands on this stuff. There's only two known sources, declared sources in the world: one in the United States, one in Russia. So there's highly unlikely there would be an event. You have to weigh the costs and benefits. The health costs, you know, could be quite high for an event that might never happen.
[Greenfield:] All right, my thanks to Bill Broad of "The New York Times," whose words will also serve as our final thought for the night. I'm Jeff Greenfield. Thank you for watching.