Al-Qaida Remains Persistent Threat to U.S., Report Says

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Margaret Warner has our coverage of the new intelligence estimate on al-Qaida.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Nearly six years after the U.S. set out to destroy al-Qaida, the terrorist network has regenerated key elements of its ability to attack the United States and is intensifying its efforts to put operatives here. That was the sobering assessment released by U.S. intelligence agencies today in a partially declassified National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE.

  Among the elements al-Qaida has protected or regenerated, it said, are: safe haven in Pakistan; operational lieutenants; and a cadre of top leadership. As a consequence, the NIE states, the U.S. is in a heightened threat environment.

  The NIE also says that al-Qaida will continue enhancing its capacity to attack the U.S. through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups, especially al-Qaida in Iraq. The president's homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, was pressed about the relationship between al-Qaida and al-Qaida in Iraq, two groups the president regularly equates.

• FRANCES TOWNSEND, Homeland Security Adviser:

  I think there's a tendency to try and suggest that al-Qaida core and al-Qaida in Iraq are two separate things. Let's step back for a minute, because I think that is not accurate. That same al-Qaida headed by bin Laden is the same al-Qaida that Zarqawi, when he becomes the emir of al-Qaida in Iraq, swears fayat, or loyalty, to. So it's the same organization.

• JOURNALIST:

  The president was warned before the war that this was actually going to help al-Qaida gain influence. Now you have a report suggesting maybe it has gained influence from the war in Iraq. Isn't that something that the president ignored?

• FRANCES TOWNSEND:

  But you're assuming this is a zero-sum game, which is what I don't understand. The fact is, we were harassing them in Afghanistan. We're harassing them in Iraq. We're harassing them in other ways non-militarily around the world. And the answer is, every time you poke the hornet's nest, they are bound to come back and push back on you. That doesn't suggest to me that we shouldn't be doing it.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Congressional Democrats quickly seized on the report. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the report "raises serious questions about this administration's anti-terror strategy, as well as its continued insistence that the war in Iraq is the central front in the war on terror."