National Intelligence Director James Clapper plans to tell a Senate panel Al-Qaeda is likely plotting a series of small-scale terrorist attacks against the United States to keep worldwide attention focused on their political issues.
According to thsi report, in his prepared testimony, Clapper says al-Qaeda’s leadership and strategies for grandiose acts of terrorism – like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – have been weakened in recent years by US-led efforts against Islamic extremists.

Intelligence chief says terrorists shifting to “smaller” attacks against US

Al-Qaeda’s leadership is becoming more decentralized and focusing on targets that can be attacked quickly with little planning.

Al-Qaeda is likely plotting a series of small-scale terrorist attacks against the United States to keep worldwide attention focused on their political issues, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper plans to tell a Senate panel Wednesday.
In his prepared testimony, Clapper says al-Qaeda’s leadership and strategies for grandiose acts of terrorism – like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – have been weakened in recent years by US-led efforts against Islamic extremists.
As a result, al-Qaeda’s leadership is becoming more decentralized and focusing on targets that can be attacked quickly with little planning.
Clapper plans to testify Wednesday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is assessing how Congress should respond to international threats.
“Over the past two years, core [al Qaeda] has continued to be committed to high-profile attacks against the West, including plans against the United States and Europe,” Clapper says in his testimony. “Despite setbacks since the 7 July 2005 attacks in London – the last successful [al-Qaeda]-backed plot in the West – we have seen the group continue to pursue a range of attack methodologies and recruit operatives familiar with the West.”
The London attack referred to coordinated explosions that killed 52 people and injured 784 when four suicide bombers detonated bombs in backpacks.
The explosives were surrounded with nails designed to maximize injuries on London’s subway system and on a bus during the morning rush hour.
Al Qaeda has been migrating from its traditional base in Pakistan to Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula, but still is recruiting operatives for attacks on Western countries, Clapper said. Some of the recruits are Americans.
As a result, law enforcement agencies have stepped up their arrests of suspected terrorists in the United States recently.
“Plots disrupted during the past year were unrelated operationally, but are indicative of a collective subculture and a common cause that rallies independent extremists to want to attack the Homeland,” Clapper says in his testimony.
The arrests in the United States, as well as military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, are not shutting down al-Qaeda, merely forcing the organization’s leaders to adapt.
“In light of the loss of experienced personnel, we judge it will seek to augment sophisticated plots by increasing its operational tempo with smaller, simpler ones to demonstrate its continued relevance to the global jihad,” Clapper says. “Jihad” is an Arabic word for “holy war.”
Although Clapper implies the federal government needs to dedicate more resources to counter-terrorism, he said last week that budget realities are likely to constrain intelligence-gathering.
“We, I think, all understand that we’re going to be in for some belt-tightening,” Clapper told a Senate panel.
He also said he would “reduce or eliminate functions not required by law or executive order,” but he gave no details.
Clapper, along with CIA director Leon Panetta, is scheduled to testify Wednesday only two days after prosecutors in New York revealed details of another homegrown Islamic threat.
Federal prosecutors this week charged seven alleged Taliban associates – two of them U.S. citizens – with trying to provide assistance to the extremist group’s military efforts in Afghanistan.
The two Americans were identified as Alwar Pouryan and Oded Orbach.
Pouryan and Orbach are accused in the federal court documents of trying to sell machine guns, surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to the Taliban. The weapons were to be used to protect heroin laboratories the Taliban operate as a source of revenue.
Federal agents arrested the seven men after Drug Enforcement Administration informants pretended to represent the Taliban while negotiating a weapons deal with the suspects.
“Today we eliminated an entrenched global criminal network, preventing it from moving ton quantities of cocaine, laundering millions in drug money and trading arms to the Taliban to undermine the rule of law and kill Americans,” DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said in a statement.
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