Al-Qaida 'As Committed As Ever'

February 25, 2004
By John Yaukey

WASHINGTON -- Weapons of mass destruction, terrorists and the unstable countries that harbor them top the list of security threats Americans face, the nation's leading security officials warned lawmakers Tuesday.

''The al-Qaida leadership is seriously damaged, but the group remains as committed as ever to attacking the American homeland,'' CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee during his annual worldwide threat assessment. ''This enemy remains intent on obtaining and using catastrophic weapons.''

Tenet warned that despite the success of American counterterrorism in disrupting al-Qaida, the organization supports a network of terrorism worldwide and remains capable of striking Americans.

''Even catastrophic attacks on the level of 9/11 remain in al-Qaida's reach,'' Tenet said.

The panel also heard from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who both underscored Tenet's assessments.

Mueller noted that al-Qaida still has the capability to strike Americans ''with little or no warning,'' and could be expected to revisit targets it has tried to strike and failed to destroy the way it did with the World Trade Center.

Jacoby warned of troubling population, economic and security trends. Large populations of unemployed young men in the Muslim-Arab world and ungoverned regions such as along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are breeding grounds for terrorism, he said.

''There are a number of factors that virtually assure a terrorist threat for years to come,'' he said.

Gannett News Service

http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/cst-nws-intel25.html