U.S. and international efforts to defeat al-Qaida have hampered the terrorist group's ability to obtain weapons of mass destruction, a top American intelligence official said.
Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, declared in a speech this week that while Al-Qaida remains dangerous, the global war against terrorists in the past 4 1/2 years has "disrupted [al-Qaida´s] efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction."
Gen. Hayden and other intelligence officials declined to provide specifics of the disruption. [Editor's Note: Can the U.S. Avoid a Nuclear D-Day? Go Here Now!]
But one administration official said the killing of al-Qaida explosives specialist Abu Marwan in Pakistan last month was one of the successes. Marwan was thought to be linked to al-Qaida's attempts to build nuclear and other unconventional explosives, the Washington Times reports.
U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have increasingly focused on monitoring the sale and movement of goods that could be used to produce WMD, including high explosives, officials told the Times.
Gen. Hayden said key successes in the war on terror include denying al-Qaida safe haven in Afghanistan, killing or capturing large numbers of its leaders, cutting funding sources and forcing terrorists to spend more time eluding capture.
"Most fundamentally, we have prevented any further attacks against the homeland," he said.
But administration officials said operations in Afghanistan and other recent incidents indicate that al-Qaida continues to seek nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons.
And Gen. Hayden warned: "The global jihadist movement is evolving in many ways. The movement is spreading and adjusting to our counterterrorism efforts, and it is also exploiting the communications revolution, the Internet and media sensationalism."
A State Department report on terrorism made public last week said the spread of information about nuclear arms development, including data on the Internet, poses an increased risk that "a terrorist organization with the right material could develop its own nuclear weapon."
