Intelligence warns al-Qaida intends to attack major targets in US

19 July, 2007:

Latest intelligence warns that al-Qaida remains determined to attack major targets in the United States, especially if it can acquire weapons of mass destruction.

According to the publicly released portions of the new National Intelligence Estimate, nearly six years after the United States set out to crush al-Qaida, the Islamist group’s determination to attack the United States is undiminished.

Ted Gistaro, the US intelligence officer who wrote the report, says that counter-terrorism efforts have hampered al-Qaida, but the terrorist outfit still remains the major threat to the United States.

Gistaro explains: “Counter-terrorism efforts have constrained al-Qaida, and caused a number of terrorist groups in addition to al-Qaida to perceive the United States as a more difficult target, but despite that we see an undiminished intent on the part of al-Qaida to try and attack us here at home. And, so we concluded that al-Qaida is and will remain the most serious threat to the homeland.”

The intelligence estimate says that al-Qaida has reconstituted itself as a centre of global Islamic terrorism in bases deep inside Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

However, Ted Gistaro concludes that al-Qaida is not stronger now than it was right after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as some earlier news reports had suggested.

Intelligence officials say that all 16 US agencies that deal in intelligence or counter-terrorism unanimously concurred with the report’s key judgments.

A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on al-Qaida had said the global jihadist movement was becoming decentralised and diffused. That appears to have changed, according to Gistaro, as al-Qaida has become more organized again and seeks to extend its reach and contacts, particularly with the group calling itself al-Qaida in Iraq.

White House Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend has said the new intelligence estimate highlights the need for continuing vigilance against al-Qaida’s terrorist threats.

But Peter Zeihan, an analyst with the private intelligence firm Stratfor, says the public portions of the National Intelligence Estimate highlight al-Qaida’s intentions, not capabilities.

Meanwhile, the National Intelligence Estimate report has further hardened the divisions on Capitol Hill between the Republicans and Democrats over the war in Iraq.

Democrats cited the report as evidence that the war in Iraq had hurt the war on terrorism, while Republicans said the report showed the Bush Administration had made gains in the war on terrorism.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) said the report confirmed that the Bush Administration’s “unnecessary, ill-conceived, and ill-planned war in Iraq has made America less secure by turning our nation’s full attention away from fighting terrorism.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (Republican-Ohio) said the report showed that Democrats are soft on terrorism.