Al-Qaida regains strength
WASHINGTON – The al-Qaida terrorist network has rebounded and is at its greatest strength since it was expelled from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a new top-level U.S. intelligence assessment concludes, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
Calling al-Qaida the most potent terrorist threat to U.S. national security, the classified draft makes clear that the Bush administration has been unable to cripple Osama bin Laden and the violent terror movement he founded.
The report is known as a National Intelligence Estimate, which is the highest-level analysis produced by the U.S. intelligence community for the president and Congress. It represents the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
The conclusions were reflected in an unclassified report on global threats to U.S. security delivered Wednesday to the House Armed Services Committee, said U.S. officials, who spoke anonymously due to the intelligence issues involved.
Al-Qaida’s core leadership – a reference to bin Laden and his top aide, Ayman al-Zawahri – is increasingly directing global terrorist operations from a haven in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, officials from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in presenting the unclassified report.
“We actually see the al-Qaida central being resurgent in their role in planning operations. They seem to be fairly well-settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan there,” John Kringen, the CIA’s director for intelligence, said.
The U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the al-Qaida threat comes as more bad news for President Bush.
Bush has repeatedly tried to cast the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq as part of the struggle against worldwide terrorism.
But many of the government’s own counterterrorism analysts say the Iraq war has fueled anti-Western militancy and served as recruitment aid for bin Laden and like-minded Islamic extremists.
Over the last two weeks, Bush has cited the violence in Iraq perpetrated by a group calling itself al-Qaida in Iraq. But that group wasn’t present in Iraq before the March 2003 U.S. invasion, and there is no evidence it is under the control of bin Laden or his lieutenants.
U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that there are growing indications of activity by al-Qaida-linked terrorists. But they caution that there is no intelligence involving a specific threat to U.S. soil.
In remarks Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board that he believed “we are entering a period this summer of increased risk.” Chertoff said his comments were based on a “gut feeling.”
Chertoff clarified those remarks in a telephone interview Wednesday, saying that what he meant to convey was “a more general, strategic sense of the threat environment,” based on publicly reported information rather than secret intelligence.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to sound any alarm Wednesday. “There continues to be no credible, specific intelligence to suggest that there is an imminent threat to the homeland,” he said in response to questions about Chertoff’s remarks.
At the same time, authorities worldwide are investigating leads arising out of the failed bombing attempts in London and Glasgow two weeks ago, which British authorities are combing for links to al-Qaida. Since the attempts, the FBI has assembled a team of agents and analysts to focus on potential summertime threats.
The mixed messages underscore the administration’s ongoing struggle to communicate timely security warnings at a time of widespread political controversy over its past handling of terrorism-related intelligence matters.
” ‘Gut feeling’ doesn’t help any of us,” said Kerry Sleeper, homeland security adviser to Vermont Republican Gov. Jim Douglas.
“A gut feeling is not the way to convey information to hundreds of thousands of first responders across this country that are responsible for identifying, interrupting or responding to a terrorist attack.”
“Nearly six years into the war on terrorism, you would hope that we would be basing our security decisions on more than somebody’s gut feeling,” Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman said.
An aide to Chertoff declined to say if the secretary’s warning was based in part on the new intelligence report.