Yemen cleric top security threat to US: official

Editor’s Note: Admitted Pentagon insider still being used to justify “domestic” war on terror.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US-Yemeni cleric and terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaqi poses “probably the most significant risk” to the United States, the top administration counterterrorism official said Wednesday.

Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told US lawmakers that Awlaqi poses a danger because of his influence on people both within and outside the United States.

Awlaqi and his organization have been “quite successful at being innovators that make our jobs more challenging,” he told a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Awlaqi, an American citizen who remains at large in Yemen, is suspected of being a leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and of instigating a string of attacks against the United States.

“I actually consider Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with Awlaqi as a leader within that organization, probably the most significant risk to the US homeland,” he added. “I’m hesitant to rank them too carefully.”

Awlaqi “certainly is the most well-known English-speaking ideologue who is speaking directly to folks here in the homeland,” Leiter added.

“There are several others who we’re concerned with, but I think Awlaqi probably does have the greatest audience on the Internet and the like. So in that sense he is the most important.”

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also told the hearing that the nation was facing “heightened” threats of attacks from extremists, possibly the highest since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
© AFP