Osama bin Laden's group is no longer the U.S.'s greatest threat, according to an official. Official: Bin Laden takes back seat

American-born Islamic cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki and his group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, now pose a more serious terrorist threat inside the U.S. than the original Al Qaeda group led by Osama bin Laden, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said Wednesday.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter described the group as “probably the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland” in testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee.


Leiter was responding to a question from the committee’s chairman, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), who asked whether the Yemen-based Al Qaeda offshoot is now a greater threat than bin Laden. “I’m hesitant to rank them,” Leiter said as he continued his answer, before adding that Awlaki “certainly is the most well-known English-speaking ideologue who is speaking directly to folks here in the homeland.”

“There are several others who we’re concerned with but I think al-Awlaki probably does have the greatest audience,” Leiter added. “So, in that sense, he is the most important.”

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told lawmakers that while the core Al Qaeda organization has been degraded in recent years, threats from other quarters are on the upswing and could pose more danger now than at any time in the past decade.

“There’s no question that we have made many important strides in securing our country from terrorism since 9/11,” she said. “But the threat continues to evolve. And in some ways, the threat today may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago.” She did not say precisely why the threat is particularly intense now, but suggested that plots have become more difficult to detect and thwart.

“Threats are not only from outside our borders, but increasingly from within,” Leiter said.“Al Qaida, we believe, in Pakistan is at one of its weakest points in the past decade, and it is continuously forcing—being forced to react to a reduced safe haven and personnel losses.”

The committee’s first hearing since Republicans took over the House was intended to focus on the key threats facing the U.S. inside its borders, but members also sparred over King’s plan to hold a hearing next month on radicalization of U.S. Muslims and their involvement in terrorist activities.

“Homegrown radicalization is a growing threat, and one we cannot ignore. This shift, as far as I’m concerned, is a game-changer that presents a serious challenge to law enforcement and the intelligence community,” King said. “We must confront this threat explicitly and directly.”

However, the ranking Democrat on the panel, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, warned that putting a specific focus on Muslims could lead to a backlash in Egypt and other countries in the midst of democracy protests.

“I want to encourage my colleagues to remember that our words travel far beyond these four walls,” Thompson said. “We must recognize that this predominantly Muslim area of the world is seeking to embrace democracy. Let us take care that nothing we do or say here today works to undermine those efforts.”

Asked about the percentage of Muslims among those posing terrorist threats, Leiter called it “significant,” but added a note of caution.

“It is an absolutely tiny percentage of the U.S. Muslim population and, frankly, the global Islamic population [that] are those that we’re concerned with at the National Counterterrorism Center. If you look at the numbers, they are significant in terms of number of attacks we have, but in terms of the broader Muslim community within the United States, it is a minute percentage of that population,” he said.

Some Republicans insisted that Muslims and Middle Easterners should be getting greater scrutiny, not less. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said airport checkpoints he has passed through spend too much time on Americans who are unlikely to pose any threat.

“There was a guy who followed me that obviously was of Arabian or Middle Eastern descent. Both of us were not patted down. There was a grandma who followed me, and she was patted down,” Broun said. “I have yet to see a grandma try to bomb any U.S. facility with chemicals in her bloomers, so I think we need to focus on those who want to do us harm….We’ve got to profile these folks.”

Napolitano said that kind of profiling would actually give Al Qaeda an opening. “I’d be happy to have you briefed in a classified setting about how when we set firm rules about we won’t screen this kind of person or that kind of person, that our adversaries, they know those rules, and they attempt to train and get around them,” she said.

After Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) complained that his 21-year-old daughter was recently subjected to an airport search that “would rise to the level of sexual assault in most states, Napolitano said she is eager to bring greater focus to the security effort through “trusted traveler” programs.

“I’d be happy to sign your daughter up,”Napolitano said. “We need to have some way to effectively separate passengers and cargo that we need to pay specific attention to from those we don’t….We need to be working toward a system where we have better ways to tier and focus on who needs to go through what kind of screening.”

In the wake of the failure Tuesday night of a House bill to extend expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, Leiter also called on lawmakers to redouble their efforts to pass [the measure] an extension by the end of the month. “The Patriot Act remains a very important tool particularly with respect to homegrown extremists. From my perspective, to have the Patriot Act expire on February 28 would be extremely problematic. It would reduce our ability to detect terrorists,” he said.

Napolitano was also questioned by members representing border districts about GAO reports that only about 44 percent of the southwest border and about 1 percent of the northern border are under “operational control.” Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) noted that individuals checked at the Canadian border are far more likely to have been flagged in a federal terrorism watch database than those entering from Mexico.

“The term ‘operational control’ is a very narrow term of art. And it does not reflect the infrastructure and technology and all the other things that happen at the border,” Napolitano said.

Napolitano said there was no evidence that drug violence from Mexico was “systematically” seeping over the border, but she said her agency was considering some grim scenarios, such as a possible tie-up between drug operations and Islamic terrorists.

“We have been thinking for some time about what would happened if Al Qaeda were to unite with the Zetas—one of the drug cartels,” Napolitano said, before adding that she would go further only in a closed, classified session. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

Members of both parties offered praise for Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who announced Tuesday that she is resigning from Congress to run a think tank. Harman said she wanted to see the Homeland Security committee granted more authority over the counter-terror effort.

“The best present you could ever give me would be to find a way to get more jurisdiction in this committee,” Harman said.

Napolitano took that opening to argue that the department’s work has suffered because she and her aides spend so much time responding to Congress.

“I…have to echo your thoughts about the amount of congressional oversight of this department. We added up the 111th Congress, and our department testified over 285 times. I testified over 20 times myself,” Napolitano added. “That amount of oversight does have impact. So, I thought I would just mention that.”