Bin Laden still top threat, intelligence chiefs say

WASHINGTON — Contradicting President Bush's counterterrorism adviser, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement chiefs and a Cabinet member said Monday that Osama bin Laden remained the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States six years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Eliminating the threat that the al-Qaida leader and his inner circle pose from their sanctuary in Pakistan's remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan "is our number one priority," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told a Senate committee.

The assessments by McConnell, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FBI Director Robert Mueller came a day after White House homeland-security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called bin Laden "a man on the run from a cave who is virtually impotent other than these tapes."

Townsend was commenting on the release of the first bin Laden video in nearly three years, which surfaced Friday on the Internet. Al-Qaida announced Monday on the Internet that another video featuring the terrorist leader will be posted this week to mark the anniversary of Sept. 11.

Each year, al-Qaida has released videos of last statements by hijackers on the anniversary of the 2001 attacks, using the occasion to rally its sympathizers.

But this year's releases underline how bin Laden is re-emerging to tout his leadership — whether symbolic or effective — of the jihad movement. While past anniversary videos featured old footage of bin Laden, the latest appears likely to include a newly made speech.

McConnell, Chertoff, Mueller and National Counter Terrorism Center Director John Scott Redd appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security to detail measures that have been taken since 2001 to combat domestic and international terrorism along with areas in which U.S. security still requires improvement.

"We are safer than we were on September the 11th, 2001. But we are not safe, and nor are we likely to be for a generation or more," said Redd, a retired admiral whose organization, created in the aftermath of Sept. 11, is the main U.S. agency for analyzing American intelligence on foreign terrorism threats. "We are in a long war. We face an enemy that is adaptable, dangerous and persistent."

McConnell recalled that a comprehensive U.S. intelligence assessment issued in July warned that the gravest terrorist threat to the United States for the next three years is bin Laden and the plots to attack American targets that he and his lieutenants are hatching in their sanctuary in Pakistan.

"The terrorist threat without question is real," McConnell said.

Mueller said U.S. officials had "tremendous concern" about an al-Qaida desire to infiltrate the United States with individual operatives.

Chertoff, whose massive department also was created in the aftermath of Sept. 11, said bin Laden's latest video and thwarted terrorist plots in Britain, Germany and Denmark were proof that "the enemy is very, very focused on continuing to wage this war."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.