CIA Chief: Iraq Not Main Front

But Hayden Says Al-Qaeda Remains Greatest Threat to U.S.

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2008

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday that al-Qaeda remains the single greatest threat to the United States but that Iraq is no longer the central front in the broader war on terrorism.

"Today, the flow of money, weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished and al-Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it as the central battlefield," Hayden told an audience at the Atlantic Council, a bipartisan group that deals with international affairs. But he warned that al-Qaeda remains "a determined, adaptive enemy" that is resilient and operating "from its safe haven in Pakistan's tribal areas."

"If there is a major strike on this country, it will bear the fingerprints of al-Qaeda," he said. While law enforcement and diplomacy have their place, Hayden said, "this war -- and no one should mistake it as anything else -- is far from over."

Hayden said there has not been any noticeable increase in terrorist chatter that would indicate al-Qaeda is preparing to take advantage of a presidential transition period as they did in attacking the World Trade Center in 1993 shortly after President Clinton took office, or again in 2001, as the Bush administration was settling in. "No real or artificial spike [in intercepted terrorist communications] has been caused by the transition," he said.

(More here.)