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The terrorist organization al-Qaeda has not ceased its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb or other unconventional weapons to use in a strike against the United States, FBI Director Robert Mueller told lawmakers yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 16).
(Mar. 18) -
Pakistani troops pass earlier this month through a cave complex once frequented by militants in northwestern Pakistan. Al-Qaeda remains intent on obtaining weapons of mass destruction, FBI chief Robert Mueller said (A. Majeed/Getty Images).
"Al-Qaeda remains committed to its goal of conducting attacks inside the United States," Mueller warned a House Appropriations subcommittee, according to Newsmax. "Further, al-Qaeda’s continued efforts to access chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material pose a serious threat to the United States."
Mueller noted that a 2008 National Intelligence Estimate "concluded that it remains the intent of terrorist adversaries to seek the means and capability to use WMD against the United States at home and abroad."
He also pointed to the conclusions of the December 2008 report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism that "the risks are growing faster than our multilayered defenses" (see GSN, Jan. 26; Ken Timmerman, Newsmax, March 17).
CIA Director Leon Panetta, though, said yesterday that a push against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's northern tribal region has forced Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants further into seclusion and impaired their capacity to develop complicated terror attack plans, the Washington Post reported.
"Those operations are seriously disrupting al-Qaeda," Panetta said. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting they they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, they they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run" (Warrick/Finn, Washington Post I, March 18).
In order to carry out new strikes in the United States, Mueller said al-Qaeda is endeavoring "to infiltrate overseas operatives who have no known nexus to terrorism into the United States using both legal and illegal methods of entry," Newsmax reported.
Bin Laden has said that acquiring weapons of mass destruction is a "religious duty," Mueller said. "Globalization makes it easier for terrorists, groups, and lone actors to gain access to and transfer WMD materials, knowledge, and technology throughout the world."
In order to block terrorist organizations' attempts to acquire nuclear arms, Obama officials have requested more funding for efforts to uncover the smuggling of nuclear materials abroad and to assist Russia's ongoing work of improving security at its nuclear weapons sites (see GSN, March 11).
"The margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," the FBI director said.
Last month, known al-Qaeda agent Sheikh Abdullah al-Nasifi declared that terrorists could best sneak into the country through tunnels that run under the U.S.-Mexico border.
"One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this 'confetti' all over them," al-Nasifi said on al-Jazeera television. "9/11 will be small change in comparison" (Timmerman, Newsmax).
Panetta said the attrition of al-Qaeda leadership through arrests and killings from Pakistani and U.S. assaults has seriously undermined the organization's capacity to plan assaults beyond the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, the Post reported
He attributed the successes against al-Qaeda to enhanced cooperation and planning with Islamabad and what he described as "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history."
An example of those recent successes was the March 8 drone attack that killed senior al-Qaeda operative Hussein al-Yemeni in North Waziristan, anonymous U.S. intelligence officers said.
Including that strike, the agency is thought to have carried out 22 such operations this year, putting the United States on course for a significant increase from previous years.
The whereabouts of bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have not been pinned down, Panetta said, though he said intelligence officials think the two men are in Pakistan, "either in the northern tribal areas or in North Waziristan, or somewhere in that vicinity."
"We thought that the increased pressure [of the attacks] would do one of two things: that it would either bring them out to try to exert some leadership in what is an organization in real trouble, or that they would go deeper into hiding," he said. "And so far we think they are going deeper into hiding" (Warrick/Finn, Washington Post I).
U.S. and NATO commander for Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal said yesterday that the armed forces there would absolutely seek to apprehend a living bin Laden, the Post reported.
"If Osama bin Laden comes inside Afghanistan," he said in Kabul, "we would certainly go after trying to capture him alive and bring him to justice."
His comments conflicted with remarks given by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Congress on Tuesday. Holder that the likelihood of bin Laden being captured alive was "infinitesimal" and that the fugitive leader would probably either be struck down in a U.S. operation or by al-Qaeda agents seeking to block his capture (Craig Whitlock, Washington Post II, March 17).