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Al-Qaida Threat Grows, Officials Say

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By PAMELA HESS, The Associated Press

Published: February 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida, increasingly tamped down in Iraq, is establishing cells in other countries as Osama bin Laden's organization uses Pakistan's tribal region to train for attacks in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, the U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday.

"Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States," Mike McConnell told a Senate hearing.

McConnell said that fewer than 100 al-Qaida terrorists have moved from Iraq to establish cells in other countries as the U.S. military clamps down on their activities, and the organization "may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country."

McConnell said while the level of violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since last year, it is going to be years before Iraq is stable.

"It is not going to be over in a year. It's going to be a long time to bring it to closure," he said.

The al-Qaida network in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan has suffered setbacks, but he said the group poses a persistent and growing danger.

The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida a safe haven similar to what it enjoyed in Afghanistan before the war but on a smaller and less-secure scale, McConnell told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It uses the area to "maintain a cadre of skilled lieutenants capable of directing the organization's operations around the world," he said.

The next attack on the United States most likely will be launched by al-Qaida operating in those "under-governed regions" of Pakistan, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned to tell Congress today.

U.S. intelligence agencies think al-Qaida figures who fled Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 have regrouped in Pakistan's tribal region, posing a threat to U.S. forces across the border and offering a potential base for global operations. U.S. officials have said they think bin Laden is hiding there.

Still, McConnell lauded Pakistan's cooperation, saying that more than 1,300 Pakistanis died fighting terrorists or in terrorist attacks in 2007. He said Islamabad has done more to "neutralize" terrorists than any other partner of the United States.

At the same hearing, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time the names of three suspected al-Qaida terrorists who were subjected to a harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and why.

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed - purported mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks - and Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were subject to the harsh interrogations in 2002 and 2003.

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