Al Qaeda Trained at Least 70,000 in Terrorist Camps, Senator Says

A congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists were trained by Al Qaeda in the “skills and arts of terrorism,” Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said Sunday.

“We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some of them were placed inside the United States,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Some of them are in the United States today. That, to my judgment, is the principal threat to the lives of people in the United States.”

A “significant number” of Al Qaeda operatives are in the U.S., Graham added, but he refused to provide an estimate.

After months of investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks and a series of congressional hearings last year, the House and Senate intelligence panels wrapped up their report Dec. 20 and released a summary.

The full classified report is still under review at the FBI and the CIA. The agencies are trying to determine whether any disclosure of information might pose a risk to national security and should remain secret.

Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, was the senior Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when the investigation was completed. He has criticized the administration repeatedly for delaying the release of the report.

He said Sunday that the administration has approved inclusion of the estimate of Al Qaeda’s terrorist training in the final report.

Graham has been critical of the Bush administration’s Iraq campaign, saying it shifted attention and resources away from the task of rooting out the remnants of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization.

“We lost focus,” he said. “We allowed Al Qaeda to regroup and regenerate.” The organization has been blamed in recent months for attacks on Western compounds in Saudi Arabia and on Israelis in Kenya.

Graham did not elaborate on what level of training Al Qaeda provided. The organization operated camps in Afghanistan that taught militants everything from basic military skills to bomb-making.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., said he was not surprised by the numbers Graham mentioned. He noted that German officials have put the number at more than 70,000 for some months, and that Bush, in his State of the Union address in January, said there were “tens of thousands.”

The numbers, Hoffman said, do not represent only committed members of sleeper cells, but also any individuals, such as John Walker Lindh, who ever went through a training camp.