http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/14-al-qaeda-on-the-run%2C-says-cia-chief-930-zj-05
Al-Qaeda on the run: CIA Director Dawn Correspondent Friday, 19 Mar, 2010 WASHINGTON: Attacks in Pakistan have driven Osama bin Laden and other leaders underground and reduced Al-Qaeda's ability to plan attacks, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. He told The Washington Post in an interview that Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders had gone into hiding. He said intelligence operatives recently intercepted a message from an Al-Qaeda official urging Bin Laden to provide leadership to the terrorist organisation, the Post reported. The CIA chief said the setbacks for Al-Qaeda resulted from an accelerated number of drone strikes and improved coordination with Pakistan in what he called "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in our history". The Washington Post reported that so far the CIA had mounted 22 such strikes this year, putting the agency on course to exceed last year's roughly 53 strikes, a record. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling," he said. "And that we really do have them on the run." Mr Panetta said the combined US-Pakistan campaign was taking a steady toll in terms of Al-Qaeda leaders killed and captured, and was undercutting the group's ability to coordinate attacks outside its base along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The CIA chief, however, warned that Al-Qaeda was still seeking to recruit people who lack criminal records or known ties to terrorist groups. Mr Panetta cited recent arrests of top Taliban figures - most notably Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar - as tangible evidence of improving ties with Pakistan's intelligence service. He said that Pakistan had given the CIA access to Baradar since his capture and added that "we're getting intelligence" from the interrogation. A senior intelligence official revealed that Baradar was tracked down as part of a joint operation with Pakistan that targeted members of a Taliban leadership council known as the Quetta Shura. A breakthrough came when the intelligence agencies obtained a list of Taliban phone numbers, one of which led them directly to Baradar, the official said. Mr Panetta said coordination between the CIA and its Pakistani counterparts had improved over the past year, despite occasional "friction based on past history". "Generally we've had much better relationships," he said. "We do a lot more operations together. That's how Baradar was captured as well as others. . . . They have been much more tolerant of the operations we have there." Mr Panetta said the agency did not know precisely where Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, were hiding, but he said agency officials believe the two were inside Pakistan, "either in the northern tribal areas or in North Waziristan, or somewhere in that vicinity." While there have been no confirmed sightings of either man since 2003, the continued pressure increases the opportunities for catching one or both, the CIA chief said. "We thought that the increased pressure would do one of two things: that it would either bring them out to try to exert some leadership in what is an organisation in real trouble, or that they would go deeper into hiding," he said. "And so far we think they are going deeper into hiding." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
