White House Insists Its Focus Is on Al Qaeda

Struggling to account for a torrent of fresh threat warnings and the reappearance of Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration scrambled Friday to defend its handling of the war on terrorism and counter criticism that it is preoccupied with Iraq.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, bristling at questions about the administration’s priorities, said President Bush’s first order of business each day is assessing the nation’s progress against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

“He does not begin his day on Iraq,” Rice said. “He begins his day on the war on terrorism and the threat levels, and the threat information that we have about the United States.”

The administration sought to bolster its case by presenting new evidence of success against Al Qaeda, declaring that one of the terrorist network’s top operatives was recently captured and is in American custody. Officials declined to identify the figure.

Rice’s remarks and disclosure of the capture were part of a concerted effort by the White House to blunt renewed criticism from legislators and foreign leaders that the hunt for Al Qaeda is failing from neglect.

In Germany on Friday, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned that the administration’s focus on Iraq is dangerously misguided.

“International terrorism is the No. 1 danger,” Fischer told the German parliament. “I need it explained to me how we ended up making Iraq the priority.”

The White House is suddenly sensitive to such second-guessing largely because of the reappearance this week of Bin Laden -- who some U.S. officials assumed was dead -- as well as a flurry of ominous new intelligence signals.

Citing an increase in intelligence traffic not seen since before the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI issued an alert late Thursday that Al Qaeda may be planning spectacular new strikes on U.S. targets.

Officials said there was no specific information indicating where or when possible attacks might take place. And the warnings prompted no change in the nation’s color-coded alert scheme, which remained at yellow, indicating an elevated risk of attack.

Friday’s developments underscore how the White House increasingly finds itself in the seemingly contradictory position of claiming significant success in disabling Al Qaeda even as it warns that the nation may be no safer now than it was before Sept. 11.

Rice straddled both those positions Friday, recounting the success of the war in Afghanistan and citing “numerous senior leaders of Al Qaeda that have either been eliminated, incarcerated or detained someplace.”

She echoed Bush’s frequent warnings that the struggle against terrorism is long-term. “It took a while for Al Qaeda to become the organization that it is,” she said. “It’s going to take a while to break them up.”

She also stressed that Al Qaeda is “an adaptable organization. We have to assume that it’s trying to adapt.”

Indeed, legislators and terrorism experts said Al Qaeda appears to have evolved considerably over the past year. The conflicting signals emanating from the White House, they said, can be explained at least in part because the genuine successes in the war on terrorism have in many ways shifted -- rather than eliminated -- dangers.

“Paradoxically this recent spasm of Al Qaeda activities could be a reflection of our success,” said Bruce Hoffman, Washington director of Rand Corp., a think tank based in Santa Monica. “We’ve forced them onto softer, more accessible targets.”

Hoffman cited recent Al Qaeda strikes on a nightclub in Indonesia and a French tanker off the coast of Yemen. “It’s little consolation for those tragically involved,” Hoffman said, “but we’re talking about a different level of operation between attacking the Pentagon and a bar in Bali.”

Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, concurred.

“We disrupted their sanctuary [in Afghanistan],” he said. “It’s going to be harder for terrorists to continue to train, plan and execute big terrorist attacks. But it doesn’t preclude dispersed terrorists from acting.”

The latest FBI warning was prompted in part, officials said, by the Bin Laden audiotape that surfaced this week, in which he praises recent strikes in Indonesia and Yemen and calls for stepped-up attacks against the United States and its allies.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, said state and local authorities have been put on heightened alert.

“In selecting its next targets, sources suggest Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks,” the bulletin said, citing targets that offer “high symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy, and maximum psychological trauma.”

It mentioned the “aviation, petroleum, and nuclear sectors” in particular, but allowed that “softer targets would be easier for sleeper cells already in the U.S. to carry out.”

Rice said the U.S. is taking steps to “bring additional protective measures, particularly to critical infrastructure locations around the United States.”

Asked whether the reemergence of Bin Laden and the flurry of new threats argue against action in Iraq, Rice repeated controversial administration claims that Iraq and Al Qaeda are linked.

“There’s a relationship here,” she said, citing claims that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons. She also alluded to a widely disputed report that an Iraqi agent met with one of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Prague last year. The CIA has said there is no evidence to support that claim.

U.S. officials confirmed Friday that a senior Al Qaeda operative had been captured recently. One U.S. official described him as “in the top dozen or two” in the Al Qaeda command structure.

Officials would not identify the detainee, but it is not a household name, a U.S. official said.

Intelligence officials said they continue to analyze the Bin Laden tape. Analysts remain convinced that it is the terrorist mastermind’s voice on the recording, but technical analysis has so far been inconclusive.

Bin Laden, the founder and a principal financier of Al Qaeda, is blamed for directing the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States. But Rice indicated that U.S. intelligence does not know whether Bin Laden continues to serve as the operational leader of the terrorist network.

“I don’t think we can be certain of what role Osama bin Laden is or is not playing,” she said. “What we have to assume is that whatever Al Qaeda is doing in terms of command and control has to be different than what it was doing before because they don’t have the home base in Afghanistan.”

The tape was aired on Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, on Tuesday. In the past, similar messages by Bin Laden were released shortly before a major attack. However, in several cases Bin Laden’s message was aired on the Al Jazeera network at least two months before an attack.