Al Qaeda Organization

One of Al Qaeda's top military strategists in Yemen was reportedly killed Friday along with five other militants in airstrikes targeting two vehicles in the country's northeastern mountains, according to officials and news agencies. The operation by the Yemeni air force was the latest in a string of attacks on Al Qaeda strongholds and the terrorist network's key operatives. The government, which has been guided by U.S. intelligence in the past, has yet to capture or kill the group's two leaders, but Friday's strikes were an indication that Al Qaeda faces increasing pressure.

A federal grand jury in New York indicted a Denver man on a terrorism charge Thursday after federal authorities alleged that he and possibly three others had gone on a buying spree of bomb-making chemicals and were preparing an attack on U.S. soil. The one-count indictment alleges that Najibullah Zazi, 24, worked for more than a year on a plot to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Justice Department documents did not name the alleged co-conspirators, but said that three other Denver-area residents had bought unusual amounts of chemicals from beauty-supply stores, including hydrogen peroxide and acetone, which can be used to make explosives.

President Obama's leading counter-terrorism advisor said Sunday that human error, not turf battles among federal intelligence officials, allowed an Al Qaeda-trained operative to carry out an attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day. Deputy national security advisor John Brennan, in appearances on several morning television news programs, also said there was "no smoking gun" of intelligence gathered by American officials that...

After a U.S. airstrike leveled a small compound in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions in January 2006, President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence officials announced that several senior Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, and that the top prize was an elusive Egyptian who was believed to be a chemical weapons expert. But current and former U.S.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an American commercial jet in an audiotape broadcast Sunday on Arab television. U.S. intelligence officials quickly raised doubts about Bin Laden's role and suggested the statement was an attempt to score propaganda points for a plot already claimed by an increasingly independent faction of his movement in Yemen. In the clip, Bin Laden said his group was behind the failed attempt allegedly carried out by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

As federal authorities press their case against a Tustin man accused of lying about ties to Al-Qaeda, they disclosed this week that some evidence came from an informant who infiltrated Orange County mosques and allegedly recorded the defendant discussing jihad, weapons and plans to blow up abandoned buildings.

The suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA compound in Afghanistan was a Jordanian recruited by that nation's spy service who lured operatives to a meeting with a promise of important new information about Al Qaeda's inner circle, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official. The bombing last week killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer who is believed to have served as the main point of contact with the informant. The disclosure that the deadliest incident in recent CIA history may have been the work of a double agent suggests a new level of sophistication in Al Qaeda's efforts to retaliate against the agency, which is responsible for an intense campaign of Predator drone strikes on the terrorist network in Pakistan over the last two years.

U.S. military leaders have concluded that their war effort in Afghanistan has been too focused on hunting Al Qaeda, and have begun to shift Predator drone aircraft to the fight against the Taliban and other militants in order to prevent the country from slipping deeper into anarchy. The move, described by government and Defense Department officials, represents a major change in the military's use of one of its most precious intelligence assets.

U.S. officials believe that as many as three dozen Americans who converted to Islam while in prison in the United States have traveled to Yemen over the last year, possibly to be trained by Al Qaeda, according to a Senate report. The findings have alarmed U.S. counter-terrorism officials, who think that Al Qaeda has expanded its recruitment efforts in Yemen "to attract nontraditional followers" capable of carrying out more ambitious operations. The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee underscores the growing anxiety in the United States about the Al Qaeda offshoot, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed responsibility for orchestrating the suspected attempted suicide bombing of a U.S. jetliner bound for Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day. "The Christmas Day plot was a nearly catastrophic illustration of a significant new threat from a network previously regarded as a regional danger, rather than an international one," the report concluded.

Al Qaeda has expanded its presence in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the sinking security situation to resurface in the country it was forced to flee seven years ago, the top U.S. military intelligence official testified Tuesday. Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Al Qaeda's efforts as one of the reasons for the Obama administration's decision last month to order additional troops to Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an American commercial jet in an audiotape broadcast Sunday on Arab television. U.S. intelligence officials quickly raised doubts about Bin Laden's role and suggested the statement was an attempt to score propaganda points for a plot already claimed by an increasingly independent faction of his movement in Yemen. In the clip, Bin Laden said his group was behind the failed attempt allegedly carried out by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

U.S. officials believe that as many as three dozen Americans who converted to Islam while in prison in the United States have traveled to Yemen over the last year, possibly to be trained by Al Qaeda, according to a Senate report. The findings have alarmed U.S. counter-terrorism officials, who think that Al Qaeda has expanded its recruitment efforts in Yemen "to attract nontraditional followers" capable of carrying out more ambitious operations. The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee underscores the growing anxiety in the United States about the Al Qaeda offshoot, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed responsibility for orchestrating the suspected attempted suicide bombing of a U.S. jetliner bound for Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day. "The Christmas Day plot was a nearly catastrophic illustration of a significant new threat from a network previously regarded as a regional danger, rather than an international one," the report concluded.

One of Al Qaeda's top military strategists in Yemen was reportedly killed Friday along with five other militants in airstrikes targeting two vehicles in the country's northeastern mountains, according to officials and news agencies. The operation by the Yemeni air force was the latest in a string of attacks on Al Qaeda strongholds and the terrorist network's key operatives. The government, which has been guided by U.S. intelligence in the past, has yet to capture or kill the group's two leaders, but Friday's strikes were an indication that Al Qaeda faces increasing pressure.

Yemeni special forces killed a suspected Al Qaeda leader and captured four fighters as the country increased pressure on the militant network operating in several key tribal provinces, officials said Wednesday. Yemen's government, juggling a civil war in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, had been slow to react to a widening Al Qaeda threat. Its stepped-up raids come amid international concern over the country's ability to defeat a branch of Yemeni and Saudi fighters that has claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day attack on a Northwest airliner.

President Obama says he has no intention of sending American troops to Yemen or Somalia. Obama told People magazine in an interview to be published Friday that he still believes the center of Al Qaeda activity is along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I never rule out any possibility in a world that is this complex," Obama said. However, he said, "in countries like Yemen, in countries like Somalia, I think working with international partners is most effective at this point."

A Pakistani television station aired a video Saturday allegedly showing the suicide bomber who hit a CIA outpost in Afghanistan telling the Pakistani Taliban leader that he had shared U.S. and Jordanian intelligence secrets with fellow militants. He also urged militants to strike other U.S. targets in retaliation for the killing of the leader's predecessor last year in a U.S. missile strike. Although its veracity could not be immediately determined, the video is a powerful recruiting tool and its content potentially embarrassing to the U.S. spy agency.

The suicide bomber who carried out an attack on a CIA firebase in Afghanistan detonated the device as he was about to be searched and used an explosive so powerful that it killed agency operatives who were as far as 50 feet away, a U.S. intelligence official said Friday. The details shed new light on how the attacker, a Jordanian physician thought to possess valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda's inner circle, was able to kill seven CIA employees and contractors and his Jordanian handler and injure six others despite a heavy security presence at the base.

A senior Yemeni official downplayed his nation's connection to the Nigerian Islamic militant suspected of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, saying the man became an Al Qaeda militant in Britain, even though he met with a radical cleric in Yemen shortly before allegedly undertaking his alleged mission. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab joined Osama bin Laden's group while living in Britain from 2005 to '08, Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad Alimi told reporters Thursday in Sana, the capital.

The suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA compound in Afghanistan was a Jordanian recruited by that nation's spy service who lured operatives to a meeting with a promise of important new information about Al Qaeda's inner circle, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official. The bombing last week killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer who is believed to have served as the main point of contact with the informant. The disclosure that the deadliest incident in recent CIA history may have been the work of a double agent suggests a new level of sophistication in Al Qaeda's efforts to retaliate against the agency, which is responsible for an intense campaign of Predator drone strikes on the terrorist network in Pakistan over the last two years.

President Obama's leading counter-terrorism advisor said Sunday that human error, not turf battles among federal intelligence officials, allowed an Al Qaeda-trained operative to carry out an attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day. Deputy national security advisor John Brennan, in appearances on several morning television news programs, also said there was "no smoking gun" of intelligence gathered by American officials that...