WASHINGTON — CIA Director Porter J. Goss said Wednesday that the United States was making a renewed push for access to Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies had yet to track down and eradicate certain pieces of Khan's vast proliferation network.
Goss said in congressional testimony that efforts to get information from Khan were underway "virtually as we speak," but unraveling the scientist's international web of nuclear suppliers remained an unmet goal.
"We have not got to the end of the trail," he said, underscoring U.S. concern that remnants of Khan's network had not been uprooted. The Pakistani scientist has admitted selling nuclear secrets to Libya and other countries.
Goss did not disclose details of the requests, or whether there had been a response from the Pakistani government, which is holding the scientist under house arrest and has rebuffed previous requests.
The spread of nuclear technology was among an array of security threats Goss highlighted during his first public appearance since taking over as CIA director in September.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss and other top intelligence officials said that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups continued to pursue plots targeting Americans; that Iran and North Korea posed daunting challenges; and that Iraq had become a recruiting and training ground for anti-U.S. Muslim militants.
In other testimony, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and James M. Loy, acting secretary of Homeland Security, said Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups remained intent on carrying out attacks in the United States.
But much of the attention Wednesday was focused on Goss, who has had a rocky tenure at the CIA, and who found himself responding to questions about interrogation practices and encroachments by other government agencies on CIA turf.
Goss delivered a lengthy defense of the CIA's handling of detainees, saying that "interrogation is a main stream of information" in the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism, but insisting that the agency did not engage in torture or deliver suspects to other countries "as a cute way of end-running" laws banning mistreatment of prisoners.
Goss said he supported efforts by other agencies to step up their own intelligence operations. He also indicated that he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed that the CIA should not relinquish control over paramilitary operations -- as was recommended by the Sept. 11 commission -- and that their positions were to be outlined in a memo to President Bush.
