Intelligence officials told the Senate yesterday that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the U.S. in the next three to six months. According to Fox News, "The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including 'clean' recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Al Qaeda is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta added."
Director of national intelligence Dennis Blair said during testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, "Al Qaeda maintains its intent to attack the homeland—preferably with a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the U.S. economy or both." Panetta also said, "The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect."
Other threats mentioned by the intel officials: Growing cyber attacks ("cyber-Pearl Harbor"); Iranian and North Korean nuclear proliferation; and further economic devastation in countries hit hard by the global economic meltdown. And in case you were wondering how committee members absorbed the information, the NY Times reports, "At times, the senators seemed more interested in debating one another than in hearing testimony from witnesses. Midway through the hearing, partisan bickering broke out about whether terrorist suspects ought to be tried in civilian courts... As senators traded barbs, the intelligence officials stared stonily ahead or shuffled their notes."
