FREDO'S WOT

U.S. Officials Warn of Greater Terror Threat
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
Published: February 2, 2006


WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Top American intelligence and military officials said today that the threat of terror attacks against American interests might be greater than ever, despite progress against Al Qaeda and the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because terror groups have become more diffuse and are aggressively seeking more lethal weapons.

John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that despite "notable successes against the global jihadist threat" — many of them at the hands of the United States' allies — there had been an "exponential increase" in the numbers of targets being tracked by American intelligence agencies, from terrorist groups to drug traffickers.

Fragmentation of terror groups, both through pressure on longer-standing groups like Al Qaeda and the copycat generation of new groups, had led to "the emergence of a decentralized and diffused movement with minimal centralized guidance or control," like those that had attacked in Casablanca, Madrid and London, Mr. Negroponte said. "They are harder to spot."

Both Al Qaeda and dozens of what he dubbed its "self-generating progeny" remained interested in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, he said, adding that it was now more likely that a terror group might use weapons of mass destruction than that a state might do so.