Differing Al Qaeda images paint a still-dangerous foe

New assessments of Al Qaeda by top US counterterrorism specialists offer grounds for both optimism and concern a year after President Obama took office.

Officials say Al Qaeda’s ability to wage mass-casualty terrorism has been undercut by relentless US attacks on the network’s leadership, finances, and training camps. But even in its weakened state, the group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt, analysts say.

The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner - both examples of the low-tech approach - have raised the fear level in Washington and across the country. Some terrorism specialists say the worst could still be to come as a wounded jihadist movement thrashes about in search of a victory.

“The noose is tightening, and Al Qaeda’s leadership is accelerating efforts that were probably in place anyway,’’ said Andy Johnson, former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and now national security director for the Washington think tank Third Way.

In the past year, Johnson said, the “good guys have been scoring the points,’’ killing key Al Qaeda leaders and disrupting multiple plots. But pressure on Al Qaeda in Iraq and Pakistan has forced terrorist operatives to flee to new havens, such as Yemen, and step up the search for weaknesses in Western defenses. While battered, “the enemy is unwavering and determined,’’ he said.

Said al-Shihri, the deputy chief of Al Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen, called yesterday for attacks on Saudi Arabia and US interests in the region, saying the West was waging a war against Muslims.

The United States’ ability to strike Al Qaeda’s nerve center was on display recently with news of the apparent death of the Pakistani Taliban’s leader, a close ally to Al Qaeda in the lawless frontier along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Hakimullah Mehsud, who suffered severe injuries in a missile strike in mid-January, was the second leader of the group to find himself in the path of a CIA Predator aircraft in the past six months. He also was closely linked to the Dec. 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost Province.

In testimony before two congressional panels last week, top US intelligence officials said the campaign has shaken Al Qaeda’s core leadership, the small band of hardened terrorists led by Osama bin Laden.

The attacks, combined with a successful squeeze on Al Qaeda’s cash supply, have impeded the group’s ability to launch ambitious, complex terrorist operations on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

“Intelligence confirms that they are finding it difficult to be able to engage in the planning and the command-and-control operations to put together a large attack,’’ CIA Director Leon Panetta said last week in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But intelligence officials also warned lawmakers of worrisome new evidence of Al Qaeda’s ability to adapt.

In an annual “threat assessment’’ to Congress, spy agencies described the emerging threat as more geographically dispersed and also low-tech, favoring lone operatives and conventional explosives.

Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, who presented the assessment to House and Senate panels, said the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit is emblematic of an evolving threat that relies on “small numbers of terrorists, recently recruited and trained, and short-term plots.’’ The new tactics are less spectacular but also much harder to detect and disrupt, he said.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was a Western-educated youth apparently recruited because he had a US visa and no record of ties to terrorist groups.

Officials say he was trained and equipped by one of Al Qaeda’s rising affiliates, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.