so now in ten years of this war with al qaeda, here's what it's been like been al qaeda's number three, which is really al qaeda number two now with bin laden out of the top spot. mohammed atef survived just two months in the job after september 11th. a predator drone got him in afghanistan in 2001. abu zubaydah lasted longer, he lasted a lot longer in life. was captured in march of 2002 and now resides in guantanamo bay. he has been famously waterboarded 83 times. investigators determined he wasn't a number three, and according to "the washington post," not even a former member of al qaeda. next came khalid sheikh mohammed. who was captured in pakistan in march, 2003. he too is now a resident of guantanamo bay. abu faraj al libi served just over two years before getting captured in 2005. he then joined his predecessors in guantanamo bay. hamza rabia was killed six months in pakistan, then came the longest-running al qaeda number three, abu laith al libi. he was two years on the job before he was killed in january 2008. that gave sheikh al masri his lead before killed, after being kill

>> the strategic defeat of al qaeda? i think i would define it as ending the threat that al qaeda and all of its affiliates pose to the united states and its interests around the world. >> thank you. thank you madam chair. >> thank you very much senator snowe. senator wyden has some additional questions and the vice chairman and i also, so senator wyden why don't you go ahead? >> thank you madam chair and just two additional matters. following up on senator snowe's question, mr. olsen beyond al qaeda's core leadership in pakistan and the al qaeda affiliates in yemen which terrorist group in your view poses the greatest threat to the country? >> i would say that beyond the al qaeda leadership in pakistan, its presence in yemen, probably the next most significant terrorist threat may emanate from the al qaeda presence in somalia. in terms of the willingness and apparent ability or at least the intent to strike outside of that particular country. we know that country, that group has successfully mounted an attack in uganda,

then, on october 12, 2000, al qaeda struck.e guided missile destroyer uss "cole" was the target of a suicide mission. 17 sailors died. >> john came to me and said, "it's al qaeda," and... and i totally agreed with him. and he said, "you got to get to the director, and we got to get this so the new york office responds initially." >> narrator: it took hours for barry mawn to convince director freeh to let new york take the lead and to authorize o'neill as the on-scene commander. >> interviewer: washington headquarters of the fbi happy that o'neill was going? >> i... my recollection is that i got questioned on it. "is john the best guy to send?" and i had no hesitancy and said, "absolutely, he's the best guy to send." >> interviewer: why would they have said that? >> well, again, i think it kind of goes back to a little bit of the history john had with some of the folks back there, that there was probably some questioning as, "well, do we want to send o'neill." and, "he does have sharp elbows." or, "his style may be..." they were

al qaeda is actively targeting the american muslim community. today's hearing will address -- it is my privilege to recommend you recognize the distinguished ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from mississippi, bennie thompson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as we begin today's hearing i want to thank you for agreeing to my request to in representative dingell and share bac bacca. they will understand the outrage and cooperation between the muslim community and government officials. i want to reiterate my belief, hearing between the linkage of extreme ideology and 5 action gives a broad based examination. yesterday the fbi made an arrest in a recent martin luther king day bombing attempt. news reports identified a suspect as a member of the same white supremacist group that influence the oklahoma city bomber timothy mcveigh. i urge you to hold a hearing examining the homeland security threat posed by anti-government white supremacist groups. as the committee on homeland security, our mission is to examine threats to this nation's securi

any al qaeda of joliet party shouldn't downplayed. we were talking about the ugonda bombings for example which were a very personal connection. the brigade to carry out the bombings was the bomb was a top al qaeda operative and a al-shabaab member. he was killed in the air strike of 2009 and was named after him because he was legendary in al-shabaab circles. the recruits from indianapolis who went to somalia were in the department of justice were actually trained. in fact the department of justice just on the 16th i believe came out with a plea deal with the minneapolis recruit and said that they named a senior member of al qaeda in east africa who conducted the training. so you talk about individuals recruited in minneapolis who go to al-shabaab at emmerson malida and receive training from one of the all-time sorted al qaeda operatives in somalia. as a mix of the al qaeda and al-shabaab connection i think in my judgment does pose a threat to our interest here in the united states. obviously aqap ha as a direct interest in attacking t

that matters. >> do you think the arab spring discredits al qaeda's core with the premise of al qaedase arab world in particularly. the only way you can get rid of them is through violence, terrorism. what people want to replace them are islamic governments? what you've seen are democratic movements that topple these governments, some of these governments and no great demand, instead a demand for democracy. >> i think the answer to that question, which is a very interesting question because we're at the beginning of that story, is ayman al zawahiri, al qaeda's current leader, personally spent 23 years of his life trying to overturn that very regime in egypt, hosni mubarak. a bunch of kids with smart phones and good understanding of social media did it in 3 1/2 weeks. one would say that that blows up al qaeda's business model. every young person who was thinking maybe i'll follow the word of the terrorist because that's the only way to achieve change through violence, had to second-guess that and say, wait a minute, this other thing may work better, much better, with less bloodshed and

policy and israel and is very much pro al qaeda and would sometimes take al qaeda's words and interpret them to bring them down to language that ordinary people could understand she had a big following so that was his role in the beginning. someone agitating, educating people to sort of be attracted to this course. he was arrested and i've probably getting myself ahead in the story but because he becomes an important personality, the jordanian government says this guy has to be stocked so they addressed him bringing him into custody for several days and then try to flip him and became an informant. >> the concern as he was encouraging, directly encouraging. >> guest: becoming a mouthpiece for al qaeda and even talking about becoming active himself in trying a way to become involved in the war against the united states, and but after he was arrested he made a very convincing conversion and became openly sympathetic to the jordanian intelligence agency and their goal and offered services i could help you if you can find a way for me to create a role so they were intrigued by this because

policy and israel and was very much pro al qaeda and would sometimes take al qaeda's words and try to interpret them and bring them down to language that ordinary young people could understand. he had a very big falling so that was his role in the beginning, someone agitating, educating and encouraging people to sort of be attracted to this course. i'm probably getting ahead of the story a little bit but because he becomes an important personality the government says this guy has to be stopped said they ended up arresting him, bringing him into custody for several days and then trying to flip him and make an informant. >> host: he was encouraging, darkly encouraging and inciting violence. >> guest: he was becoming a mouthpiece for al qaeda and was talking about becoming active himself to find a way to physically become involved in the war against the united states and against israel, but after he was arrested he made a convincing conversion and began openly sympathetic to the jordanian intelligence agency and their goal and eventually offered his services so i can help you if you can

it was very much pro-al qaeda and would sometimes take al qaeda source and try to trick them a try to bring them down to language that ordinary young people could understand. he was quite good at this. he had a big following. someone who was agitating, educating and encouraging people to sort of be attracted to this course. he was arrested, getting my head of myself, because you become such an important personality to jordanian government said this guy has to be stopped. they arrested him. bring him into custody for several days and then try to flip them, tried to make him an informant. >> host: their concern was he was encouraging and inciting violence becoming a mouthpiece for al qaeda and becoming active himself and trying to find someone to physically become involved in the war against the united states and against israel. after he was arrested he made a very convincing conversion and became openly sympathetic to the jordanian intelligence agency and their goal and eventually offered his services. said i could help you if you find a way for me to try, too great a role for me. cent

while we have made considerable progress against al qaeda and the fata, we face growing threats as al qaeda continues to spread. in my view, aqap poses the biggest threat and i urge you to make dismantling that were pure primary focus before the strike us successfully cured at home. the past spring brought immense changes to the middle east but it remains unclear what effect this might have on our long term counterterrorism efforts. this on certainty is further complicated by our own the current fiscal condition where the resource constraints were no devotee impacting the national defence and counterterrorism enterprise. a mixed these threats it is critical to the national security that the ncbc perform its mission. you and i talked about some of the feelings leading up to the christmas bombing attempt. especially the ncbc's an ability to connect the dots. while there has been much progress, a lot of work remains including on the information sharing and the detainee and data retention. where there's an attack on the imminent threat like 12, 25 or times square committee will often be t

we have a continuing fear of al-qaeda striking. so bin laden may be dead, but think of the talent that it took to fund and build up from nothing of, you know, a bunch of different people a widespread, clandestine network over 60 countries with the, um, cia and the mossad and the intelligence outfits of various western countries worrying about you. he's certainly overmatched, but he was no fool. and, indeed, one of the reasons that i think that al-qaeda has been so intent on acquiring nuclear materials is they're looking for an equalizer. they're looking for a game changer. because, and, you know, all they can do is try to pursue the ultimate act of asymmetric warfare. so, you know, that's why it's such a worry. now, how, you know, the death of bin laden effects them this long run, i don't know. i have bin laden's operative saying to him, you know, the years since 9/11 have not been kind to us in many ways, you know? and you do sense that to some extent, depending on what happens in the middle east, the world is moving on. i mean, t

also senior members of al-qaeda, one a spiritual advisor to al-qaeda, very close associate to bin laden >> rose: then comes the y thede. what happened on that day? >> it was an extraordinary operation, because from the cia's point of view the whole focus is on keeping this man safe. he's intent on killing people. they're intent on making sure nobody discovers or learns his secret identity. >> rose: why had they been abler survival instincts, all of their precaution? >> i think one reason is because the level of excitement was so great. >> rose: about al-zawahiri?abou. just a few months ago, when bin laden was potentially there to be killed or captured, it was a risky operation but everybody wanted to do it as quickly as possible. it was the same in this case. it was the closest anyone had been to this potentially important target in eight years. so a the way up to the white house people were excited, because finally we'll get a major blow against al-qaeda. >> rose: then the day comes.he . he gets a ride from pakistan across the border with an afghan guard. he goes to the base itself. th

between shabaab and al-qaeda.al-qaeda is the mother of the born holy. we get tactics and guidelines from them. many spent time with bin laden. that was done in an interview with the l.a. times, and they went on to say for the first time they spoke about the possibility of attacking americans saying journalists and aid workers were not immune from attacks because the animosity towards the united states. going through the testimony in the written form, i provided a number of leaders that serve as both shabaab and al-qaeda ex, and there's 13 i believe. they spoke about the ideology or have direct links. several were responsible for the embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania. they were targeted clearly at u.s. embassies. they killed more muslims than americans or anybody else. i would say to my second point inside the clan of the inner warfare, but it's an ideological bat egg aerosought and enemies throughout somalia. they found any muslims not willing to work with them and killed them. they set about trying 20 terror

he's like al-qaeda royalty. in the court, he takes the legal pad from his defense table and makes a paper airplane and shoots it across the courtroom at one of his co-conspirators, and he opens the plane, and both men start laughing. i said, i have to find out what's gong on there. on the inside of the plane was written the flight numbers for 9/11 or the tail numbers of the jets. that image of the court and the paper airplane and these two 9/11 suspects mocking us seven or eight years after the attacks, this was a real window on to who these people are. >> host: catherine herridge from fox news, a national cor spot, new book called the next wave, on the hunt for the al-qaeda's next american recruits. one wants to know, ask why she thinks the terrorists attack us and why she thinks they hate us. let's get to the question the last caller asked. start there with that, that question on twitter. >> guest: well, i think, you know, part of the book, what i try to do is take you along on the investigation so you go to t

al qaeda and the taliban crossed over and established a new sanctuary next to afghanistan. then, in what has been called an even greater strategic mistake, the united states found a new mission, a new war in iraq. al qaeda felt it was given a second chance. >> we never felt that america would invade iraq. we never thought that the american will do that, you know, and get involved in that war. >> reporter: was iraq a gift to al qaeda? >> yeah, of course. yeah, is gift. >> reporter: a gift, because iraq would inexpire a new generation of al qaeda fighters. >> that's part of a two-part series that airs starting this thursday night, september 1st at 9:00 p.m. day of destruction, decade of war. we hope you'll watch. we'll be right back. >>> i'm hosting tonight's show from new orleans. but be here tonight wasn't really the plan. i'm here because hurricane irene made it impossible to fly to new york, like i was supposed to. but my unfortunate predicament is strangely apropos, because while hurricane irene has shut down the east coast, tonight is also the sixth anniversary of hurri

man who used to work as a bodyguard for osama bin laden has warned in an interview with nhk that al qaeda may launch attacks that are more serious than those on september 11th, 2001. nhk was able to meet nassir al-bahri. >> translator: after bin laden's death, al qaeda will regain momentum. >> the former bodyguard said radical groups that used to receive military training in afghanistan have gone back to their home countries over the past ten years. he added these groups are heading local organizations and are strengthening cooperation. >> translator: arabs led al qaeda in the past. but now there are members in various nations. the network could be preparing for an attack that will dwarf the 9/11 attacks. >> al-bahri's statement says even after losing the charismatic leader, al qaeda is reforming itself and continues to be a threat. >>> at least 11 people have been killed in two suicide attacks. a car bomb exploded in the alkub area in the abyan province sunday night. in the same province a man carried out a suicide attack using explosives. both attacks are suspected of targeting local go

he was writing fairly radical things, he was supporting al qaeda, supporting al qaeda leaders, trying to explain them to the masses, and doing it in a very effective way, so he had a very large following, young people in particular. >> warner: and what do you know about balawi and what drove him? you had a lot of details in here. how did you get inside his head? >> he left quite a record of his own thinking. he wrote hundreds and hundreds of words in his blogs before he was arrested. even after he went to pakistan, he continued to write articles, he submitted to interviews, he had multiple video tapes right up to the day he was killed. so he was able to tell us what he was thinking, and even gave us a glimpse of his own internal conflicts as he was trying to decide whether it was worth it to sacrifice himself. this is not some young, naive 20-year-old giving himself up for a few hundred bucks; he was a doctor, a learned man. he really wrestled with this idea of, "will i kill myself? is this the best i can do for god, for allah?" in the end, he ultimately decided that this is the path

in al qaeda's leadership who coulder u.s.lled last week by a cia drone strike in pakistani tribal region dealing al qaeda another major blow. nearly ten years since 9/11, u.s. officials are now sounding cautiously optimistic that a strategic defeat of al qaeda could be near. for most of the past year rachel has been working with nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel about not 9/11 itself, but the decade after, how 9/11 has changed the country, what we've done and what we've done different now because of it. here now is a short clip from the piece, take a look. >> the combination of cia units, u.s. special forces, afghan militias, and american air strikes is devastating. the taliban start to run and abandon al qaeda. >> you know, all the taliban no kabul falls, just two months after 9/11. girls are free to go to school. the repressive regime that hosted bin laden is defeated. a month later, even kandahar, the taliban's hometown, is overthrown. >> kandahar, that was the last urban stronghold of the taliban and al q

get in that war. >> was iraq a gift to al qaeda?was a gift. >> a gift because iraq would inspire a new generation of al qaeda the fighters. >> that's part of a two-part series that airs starting this thursday night, september 1st at 9:00 p.m. "day of destruction, decade of war." we hope you will watch. we'll be right back. it was the best da♪ -woohoo! -yes! ♪ it was the best day ♪ it was the best day yeah! ♪ it was the best day ♪ because of you [echoing] we make a great pair. huh? progressive and the great outdoors. we make a great pair. right, totally. uh... that's what i was thinking. covering the things that make the outdoors great. call or click today. whose non-stop day starts with back pain... and a choice. take advil now and maybe up to four in a day. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪ a network of possibilities. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural c

al qaeda, which attacked this country i 9/11, the leadership of al qaeda was there. so we are going after those that continue to plan to attack this country. they're terrorist. and the operations we have conducted there have been very effective and it undermines their ability to plan those kind of attacks. let me make this point. those terrorists are also a threat to pakistani national security as well. they attack pakistanis. they go into karachi and a slot blot and conduct attacks that killed pakistani -- and in islamabad. it's in their interest to go after these terrorists as well. >> what is left of the al qaeda network? >> the al qaeda network has seriously been weakened. we know that, but they're still there. those that are suggesting somehow this is a good time to pullback are wrong. this is a good time to keep putting the pressure on, to make sure that we really do not undermine our ability -- their ability to conduct any kind of attacks on this country. >> will they ever be defeated? or is donald rumsfeld right that this is a long war? >> we can go after the

the fact was, al qaeda, which attacked this country on 9/11, the leadership of al qaeda was there.e are going after those who continue to plan to attack this country. they are terrorists, and the operation we have conducted there are very effective in undermining al-qaeda and their ability to plan those kind of attacks. but let me make this point. those terrorists that are there are also a threat to pakistani national security as well. they go into karachi, islamabad and carry out operations that killed pakistanis. it is their interest to go after these terrorists as well. they cannot just pick and choose among them. >> what is left of the al qaeda network? >> the network has been seriously weakened, we know that, but they are still there, and we need to keep the pressure on. those suggesting that this is a good time to pull back are wrong. this is a good time to keep pressing to make her that we undermine their ability to produce any kind of attack on this country. >> will they ever be defeated, or was donald rumsfeld right, and that this is just a long war? >> we can go after the

suggest the defeat of al qaeda overall.n fact, some of the affiliates have gained strength by virtue of the autonomy and not centering the leadership in the tribal areas where the u.s. and the allies have been very, very active, so i think that it is going to take a real sustained effort now against the affiliates just as we have gone against the core, and that is going to take time. >> are we headed in the right direction, fran, now that we are pulling u.s. troops out of afghanistan, and 10,000 by the end of of the year? is that going to cripple and weaken our position in going after al qaeda? >> well, look, the real, what you worry about and what has kept the core in the tribal areas is that was the new safe haven and once we denied them the safe haven in afghanistan. the taliban is strong in afghanistan and a weak central government in the karzai government, and the fear, of course, and i think rightly, is that as you remove the u.s. troops, you worry that as there is pressure in the tribal areas, they will push themselv

he was actually sitting in, basically, his first briefing on al-qaeda and the threat of al-qaeda on the morning of 9/11 still getting up to speed on that. and he is now the longest-serving fbi director since j. edgar hoover himself and the last of the president's national security team still in his same job since 9/11. he's on his second president and is about to finish out his ten-year term this september, thept -- september 3, 2011. and what he has done is really remarkable. he's on the cover of "time" magazine this week which is one of the first times he's gotten any recognition for the work he's done sort of leading this evolution of the fbi towards an agency much more focused on counterterrorism and national security than a lot of the traditional crimes we still think of the fbi as being involved. in. >> this is what the book looks like, and this is a participatory interview. we'll put the phone numbers on the screen, and our twitter address is at booktv. so get involved with this discussion about the role of the fbi and national security, and we'd very much like to hear there you.

some of them are almost to the scale of big al qaeda. particularly al qaeda in the arabia peninsula based in yemen which is led by a man who an american citizen, had lived in san diego when the two hijackers were there. as they got closer to 9/11, as they moved to falls church, virginia, he moved with them here and he's now in yemen, his name is awlaki. very dangerous adversary for the u.s. interest. yes, ma'am? >> so if you did have an idea in the book, who would play the character? >> which? >> the title character. >> there isn't a title character. but there is a main male character who's name is tony ramos. i've already said he's the will smith of the state department. we have already cast that role. now some have -- some who have misguidedly assumed that the person in the book who is senator john billington is somewhere like me then ask why if he was your alter ego did you kill him off in such a dangerous , violent way so early. the answer is that the person that will play billington is going to be robert redford. [laughter] >> and r

i do believe that al qaeda version 1.0 is nearing its end but i'm very concerned about what al qaeda version 2.0 will be. it will morph, it will dis% and become in more ways -- disburse and become more ways westernized, dual passport holders, more emergent leaders in more places over time. i think they're refining their message in a way against real difficulties but trying hard to define their message in a way that will appeal to a broader audience. >> when i think about that and if you say al qaeda 1.0. do we really understand what the next generation of al qaeda will be? i can't help thinking no one knew 10 years ago that someone was going to fly airplanes into buildings. so when you think of that and all the possibilities of will happen to al qaeda, what's your greatest fear, challenge, how to get at that? >> my greatest -- i'm not going to say my greatest fear because al qaeda might be taking notes and i don't want them to act out my greatest fear. but i do think they will need places to operate from and will continue to need sanctuary and will go where the sanctuary is and where

in the book, tell us about it. >> we report the al qaeda affiliate in yemen is trying to make one ofisons. what they try to do is wrap it around explosives and detonate it in an enclosed place, again, it wouldn't kill that many people, but it would terrorize the country, perhaps shutting down mass transportation. >> you can say we'll hit one movie theater and next 100. >> that's right, so the pr propaganda value would be huge. >> how hard is it to make? >> it's easy if you have the right laboratory conditions. the problem with yemen, very primitive. >> got to read this book. "counter strike" there it is on the screen, the untold story of america's secret campaign against al qaeda. >>> when we return, let me finish why it's time for president obama to go big, after labor day, go big time. you're watching "hardball" on msnbc. [ grandma ] why do relationships matter? [ grandpa ] relationships are the basis of everything. [ grandma ] relationships are life... if you don't have that thing that fills your heart and your soul, you're missing that part of your life that just fulfills you. ♪

the iraqi version of al qaeda. this is an attack during the holy month of ramadan, which is particularly jarring to muslims. there's a similar attack at about the same time last year. what we are seeing is al qaeda in iraq continuing to try to assert its relevance. it has continued to try it capitalize on the killing of osama bin laden and use that as a lever to try to, frankly, regain attention in the news and reassert its relevance. it has managed to kill an awful lot of iraqi civilians, muslims, and almost all of it has not managed to do anything strategically to accomplishing any of its strategic objectives of pushing the united states away from iraq. if anything, it has pushed the iraqi government and american government close it together. caller: host: -- host: you say it pushes the government's close it together, but united states is still on schedule of withdrawing troops. the heightened tension, the heightened violence -- is that a result of groups saying to themselves the u.s. is starting to get out, and

there are al qaeda in iraq saddam hussein. cohorts with terrorist secretly and without fingerprints he could provide want to be seen weapons to terrorists. or helped them develop their own well the war really had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism there was no connection whatsoever between iraq and the secular regime there and the religious fanatics who perpetrated nine eleven they wanted to believe that there was a connection but the cia was sitting there the f.b.i. was sitting there i was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years for years we've looked for a connection let's just no connection saddam wasn't. our goal he was a terrible villain yes but he was not willing to sacrifice his own life. just stupid answers terrorists and completely antithetical to used al-qaeda has had total contempt for saddam hussein himself he's been a socialist he's been very harsh he's treated islamic leaders misleaders extremely harshly rock and we have very good intelligence on this was not part of the picture of terroris

some of them are almost on the scale of dig al qaeda, particularly al qaeda in the arabian peninsula based in yemen, which is led by a man who is an american citizen who had lived in san diego when the two hijackers were there. as they got closer to 9/11, as they moved to falls church virginia, he moved with him here and he is now in yemen. his name is awlaki, and a very dangerous adversary for u.s. interest. yes, maam? [inaudible] >> there is in the title character but there is a main male character whose name is tony ramos, and i have already said that he is the will smith of the state department, so before we cast that will -- we have already cas that role. now, some who have assumed that the person in the book who is senator john billington is somewhat like me and then ask why if he was your alter ego due to did you kill him off in such a dangerous, violent way so early? well, the answer is that the person that will play billington is going to be robert redford. [laughter] and, bradford's daily fee is very high. [laughter] so in order to keep the cost of the movie down, they coul

involvement somewhere like libya but with what we're discussing over the al-qaeda elements that could be leading libya right now what is the u.s. stance again at this point. it's not clear you know our qaida has been hyped a great deal i mean the it is to our benefit to turn our hired into people who have a lot of the red army i mean is a sort of military jargon it is if it's more like an ideology it's not really an organization so i think people need to be very careful here and when people through term are around it doesn't mean that you have there osama bin laden's lieutenants are are running at us and saying that the al qaeda is active in northern nigeria it's no evidence that they're actually been in northern nigeria every time the united states wants to step into a situation they say well our kind is that they're there for all we have to fight terror. therefore we have to get involved people need to be careful. and they really quickly just because syria of course is also dealing with an amount of iraq and violence what do you think all of this needs for syria as violence continue

or not al qaeda. i think it makes it very difficult. that is why what you are seeing is the emphasis on trying to radicalize and train people in place. >> but the strategy does not grow with ideologies very much. it deals with knocking out an organization, but it does not grapple with the underpinnings of this movement. >> i think some of that as well. that is an idea -- that is an area where we are not well situated to be out front. people who are listening to the narrative of radical islam and islamist extremism are not interested in working with the united states interpretation. that is where the community has to get involved. they have to rescue their own youth from the people who are trying to come in and convert them to suicide bombers. >> can you grapple with the new obama strategy for a minute and grapple with something that is very interesting that has developed in three or four years. of was during a session this morning, he talked about how we have two combat forces now. in the real world,

al qaeda still exists but they have been pummeled. we saw them concentrate their killing in shi'ite and killed or wounded over 300 people in one day. they're still dangerous and go after the innocent women and children with no regard for the rules of warfare. they are a wounded, weekend, but still dangerous animal. supportproviding direct to the militia in iraq. the iranian proxies, because it is not in their best interest, to see a strong, independent, economically viable to iraq next door, and you can understand why. the single biggest threat in is notal qaeda but these proxy militias backed by them. they're trying to influence the decision about u.s. troops remaining in iraq as a training mission and right now, we still have plans to go down to zero. if they ask and the president in chief agrees, we could see a training capability remain in iraq and there has been no decision made yet. i want to spend just a little bit of time on the security side in afghanistan. we want to get into some detail on this, and i am eager to do so, but

>> certainly it's had an impact on the ability of al qaeda in pakistan, the main al qaeda organization attacks against the united states. but the affiliates in places like yemen pose a very direct threat to the united states. what this also shows is that even after ten years of improvements in counterterrorism efforts such as in the military and intelligence community and even in cyberspace where the government experts are now able to infiltrate terrorist cell phone networks and even computers, the government still has a lot to learn about the root causes of terrorism and combatting al qaeda's very simple but effective message that the west is at war with islam. this is something that the west and the united states is still trying to combat. >> can the u.s. just quickly here, we have 20 seconds left. can the u.s. do anything to undermine the message from al qaeda? >> yes, what i mentioned before is for instance what they're doing in many of the areas in computers, where in cyberspace where terrorists recruit, where they plot plans and strategies, right now you have strategists going in

this is not al qaeda. it's a lone crank. it's one person.ibility except having a big mouth. >> but it is obviously -- this person can be a joke and still -- we've seen other people killed, quite honestly, by extremists after a film maker, for example, van gogh, he was killed in 2004. there have been threats against cartoonists and other satirists. we've seen this before. >> there's no down al qaeda would like to go after high profile figures and media entertainment. the idea david letterman is the subject of some kind of active al qaeda plot is just ridiculous. what's more, i think, all this publicity, kind of feel sorry for letterman. all this publicity if anything is really where the threat is. it's not the eight people that commented about a story that was a nonissue on an al qaeda web forum. >> thank you very much, even. appreciate it. see you soon. >>> a not guilty plea from the long-time girlfriend of a reputed boston crime boss. that's our look at the stories around the nation. if convicted, she could spend up to five years behind bar

over 1,000 al qaeda related militants were in the province. some across the country are joining and clashing with the government. their president is in saudi arabia recuperating from injuries he suffered in june during a bomb attack. >>> now let's take a look at the latest in business news. good morning. >> very good morning to you, katheri katherine. let's start with atory in the united states. the fiscal 2012 budget deficit will likely fall below $1 trillion for the first time in four years. in an outlook released on wednesday, the congressional budget office forecast a deficit of $973 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, starting in october. the projected decline reflects the content of the debt ceiling bill enacted earlier this month. this calls for cuts of about $1 trillion in the deficit, stretching over ten years from 2012. on the economy, the report says the pace of growth will remain sluggish for a while. it estimates the jobless rate to stay high at the 8% level for the next three years. >>> for the october three december quarter, t

. >> in august 2001 weeks before 9/11 osama bin laden and his al qaeda deputy meet around a campfireafghanistan, with one of pakistan's top nuclear scientists. they discuss al qaeda's aspirations to build a nuclear bomb. >> the two apparently met in what is referred to as the fireside chat or at a dinner and talked about al qaeda's interest in nuclear bombs where the al qaeda leader apparently was treeing gain some basic sense of what it would take. >> ralph mow et larson is a veteran u.s. intelligence officer. >> a famous question he apparently asked at the end of that meeting was after bashir was trying to tell him how hard this was and how difficult it was for pakistan, bin laden said if i have the material, then how do i build it? >> the pakistani scientist sulton bashir mahmoud later confirms to u.s. official that is the meeting took place and that he gave al qaeda leaders a pencil drawingful a crude nuclear bomb design. just one month after that meeting in kandahar september 11th, 2001. as the united states reel from the attacks, those who know about that meeting at that kandah

i didn't refer to al qaeda.salific groups in league with al qaeda. >> you don't know all the details with this very important terminology. you have to be more acquainted with these words i know. you are outside of the area. >> you recently accused the west of hypocrisy for describing rioters in england as gangs. i want to play some of what you said. >> what happened in london, birmingham, bristol, is only 1%, maybe, of what happened in some restive areas in my country. however, some people they don't want to acknowledge the reality. >> are you saying that what happened in england is the same as your government using snipers and warships against your own people? >> this is your own version of the events. i didn't say that. i didn't compare the two situations. i just wanted to shed some light on the hypocrisy of the british prime minister while addressing the situation in my country. any gangs, wherever they are, should be dealt with accordingly by the security forces. whether they are in england, in syria, in usa