Covering the War on Terror

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A01

Despite U.S. success in attacking al Qaeda's hierarchy, the network is still capable of "catastrophic attacks" against the United States, and acquiring chemical, biological and radiological weapons remains a "religious obligation" in Osama bin Laden's eyes, CIA Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday.

The U.S. assault on al Qaeda has "transformed the organization into a loose collection of regional networks working autonomously," Tenet said. The smaller groups "pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks," but they share an anti-American goal.

The most immediate threats include the possibility of "poison attacks" and al Qaeda's ongoing effort to produce anthrax material, Tenet said. He added: "Extremists have widely disseminated assembly instructions for an improvised chemical weapon using common materials that could cause a large number of casualties in a crowded, enclosed area."

"We are still at war against a movement," said Tenet, appearing with other administration officials to discuss global security threats. "People who say it's exaggerated don't look at the same world I look at. It's not going away anytime soon."

In Iraq, most attacks by insurgents have been committed by loyalists of the former government, said Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He added that "it appears much of the Sunni population has not decided whether to back the coalition or support the insurgents. The key factors in this decision are stability and a future that presents viable alternatives to the Baathists and Islamists."

At the same time, he said, foreign fighters have carried out "some of the most significant attacks," including suicide bombings. "Left unchecked," Jacoby said, "Iraq has the potential to serve as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists."

The testimony came in the administration's annual worldwide threat assessment, which aims to give Congress a broad view of national security threats and the status of U.S. responses to them.

It was the first time Tenet appeared on Capitol Hill since controversy intensified over his agency's prewar assessments of Iraq, and he was peppered with questions by Republicans and Democrats about CIA assertions that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and had an advanced nuclear program, none of which have been found.

"People voted to authorize the use of force based on what we read in these reports," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Finding no weapons of mass destruction is "a pretty bitter pill to swallow with respect to the value of intelligence, particularly in a preemptive war."

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) pressed Tenet even harder, saying the decision to go to war in Iraq was based on "either bad intelligence or misleading the people."

Tenet shot back: "We are not perfect, but we are pretty damn good at what we do, and we care as much as you do about Iraq and whether we were right or wrong."

For the past eight months, the House and Senate intelligence committees have been examining the intelligence community's prewar analysis of the Iraq threat. The Senate committee plans to issue the first of its two reports next month and, according to Senate officials, it will be highly critical of Tenet and the CIA. President Bush recently appointed a commission to probe the same matter, with a mandate to look at the broader question of the CIA's ability to track weapons proliferation.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) questioned Tenet about his Feb. 5 speech at Georgetown University, which included his declaration that CIA analysts "never said there was an imminent threat." Tenet's speech was a response to criticism of prewar intelligence and to those who say the Bush administration portrayed as imminent the threat posed by Iraq's weapons and links to terrorists.

"If it wasn't an imminent threat, in your mind, how would you have characterized or assessed the threat at that point in time?" Snowe asked yesterday.

"I would have characterized it as something that was grave and gathering, something that we were quite worried about, quite worried about the nature of surprise," Tenet answered.

". . . And so you would agree with the characterizations that were made by the president, the vice president, Secretary Powell, in that respect," Snowe asked.

"I just characterized what I think, how I was thinking about this at the time. . . . I haven't parsed everybody's words, and I don't want to do that."

". . . But, I'm just wondering then, do you think that we made a -- we then took this action in Iraq on a lesser standard than 'imminent'?" Snowe asked.

"Well, I don't want to go back," Tenet said. " . . . See, now we're -- we're now into a realm of what all the policymakers were thinking about this, and I don't want to go back and parse their words."

Jacoby, Tenet and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III all answered "yes" when asked if the United States is safer now than right after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But they each went on to describe an interlocking web of terrorist organizations that have found common cause against the United States since then.

Mueller said subways and bridges in major cities and airlines continue to be al Qaeda targets. "There are strong indications that al Qaeda will revisit missed targets until they succeed," Mueller said, "such as they did the World Trade Center. And the list of missed targets now includes both the White House as well as the Capitol." He said that while the bulk of al Qaeda supporters in the United States help with fundraising, logistics and recruitment, some have been involved "in operational planning."

Jacoby said hijackings and attacks with portable, shoulder-fired missiles against civilian aircraft remain prominent concerns.

"A number of factors virtually assure a terrorist threat for years to come," Jacoby said. "Despite recent reforms, terrorist organizations draw from societies with poor or failing economies, ineffective governments and inadequate education systems."

"Demographic bubbles" of young people "further burden governments and economies," he said, mentioning a number of countries where a high proportion of the population is under 15: Saudi Arabia, with 43 percent; Iraq, 41 percent; Pakistan, 39 percent; Egypt, 34 percent; Algeria, 33 percent; and Iran, 29 percent.

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