On the scene with Walter Rodgers in Aden, Yemen

October 26, 2000
Web posted at: 3:38 p.m. EDT (1938 GMT)

Walter Rodgers

CNN.com talked with Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers, who is reporting from Aden, Yemen, on the latest developments surrounding the investigation of the attack on the USS Cole. Security has intensified, especially after a bomb warning at the Yemen hotel housing investigators.

Q: Has the bomb threat rattled investigators at all, or this just part of doing business in the investigative world?

RODGERS: The American ambassador here, Barbara Bodine, and those attached to her security team took the threat seriously. There was word of a threat that reached them in the middle of the night. They had a meeting with Yemeni security officials who have responsibility for the external security on the outside of the hotel where the Americans are. They decided to take some measures to beef up security around the hotel where several hundred Americans have been staying. I should note there's been some downsizing of the American contingent here and even talk of the Americans moving to another hotel where they feel they might be more secure.

Q: Security was already heightened in the area. How tight is it now?

RODGERS: To get to the hotel where the Americans are staying, you have to cross several perimeters. In an automobile, which of course in this part of the world is sometimes used to carry a car bomb, you have to cross a barrier and they generally just won't let a car within 100 or 200 meters of the outer fence of the hotel. Most people cannot park their cars in the hotel parking lot, except the police if they have blue Yemeni police license tags.

Everybody else has to walk to the hotel. You have to pass a perimeter where you have fellas on pickup trucks with 50-caliber machine guns and plenty of Kalashnikov rifles. You have to have somebody let you go through that line and then you go through another line, and then you go through another line and metal detectors inside the hotel. Inside the hotel, the security becomes American.

So, security is very tight.

Q: On CNN this morning, you said you had three Kalashnikov rifles pointing at you a few days ago. Can you elaborate?

RODGERS: I just wanted to take a walk outside of the hotel. There's a stretch of beach along the bay, and there's good birding there. I figured I'd take a walk down to see what (migrant birds) were coming out of Russia. I tried to walk outside of the hotel and the Yemeni guards pointed three Kalashnikov rifles in my stomach, and they wouldn't let me go outside of the hotel.

I went back in and talked with the Yemeni police inside the hotel and persuaded them that all I was going to do is take a walk and that I wasn't a threat to anybody. They asked if I would let them send a police escort with me. And I said, yes. That was the compromise. So, when I took a walk to watch the birds -- the sandpipers and the plovers and the gulls that came out of the Russian arctic wintering here in Aden -- I had a police escort.

Q: How seriously are the U.S. investigators taking the Yemeni president's statements, including the latest that an Egpytian may have been involved?

RODGERS: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has access to an awful lot of information that has been gathered. The Yemeni police have questioned more than 2,800 people in the course of the last two weeks, including anyone who saw or had any dealings with the alleged bombers. They were all questioned extensively; some have been detained, others have been let go.

How seriously does anyone take the threat? I think everyone generally believes the Yemeni president, that in fact one of the perpetrators may indeed have been Egyptian. ... But this is an attack that involved far more than just one or two individuals. ... A cell like this needs at least half a dozen people.

Q: Are investigators giving any clues as to whether they might be on the verge of a breakthrough in this case?

RODGERS: They are extremely tight-lipped. I should also say that this is still a very early stage in the investigation. I've had Yemenis tell me it could take six months until we get a major break in the case. So, however, hopeful President Saleh may be of an early breakthrough, we haven't seen any evidence of a quick breakthrough now.

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