U.S.: Al-Qaida shifting from Iraq to Pakistan

McConnell also told the Intelligence Committee that the Taliban, once thought to be routed from Afghanistan, has expanded its operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around the capital of Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year.

At the same hearing, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time the names of three suspected al-Qaida terrorists who were subjected to a particularly harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and why.

“We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time,” Hayden said. “There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”

Hayden said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the purported mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States — and Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were subject to the harsh interrogations in 2002 and 2003. Waterboarding is an interrogation technique that critics call torture.

Waterboarding induces a feeling of imminent drowning with the restrained subject’s mouth covered and water poured over his face.

“Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death, you could drown someone,” McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA’s arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

North Korea concerns
In other troubling parts of the world, the intelligence director said North Korea was proceeding with a nuclear program despite an agreement last year to suspend operations and Iran was “keeping open the option” of building nuclear weapons.

The United States remains “uncertain about Kim Jong Il’s commitment to full denuclearization, as he promised in the six-party agreement,” McConnell said, referring to the North’s leader and to the nuclear talks involving the U.S., the Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

Increases in military spending have enabled Russia to reverse deterioration of its military forces that set in as the Soviet Union collapsed, McDonnell said, and China’s military modernization “will put American forces at greater risk.”

Also testifying, FBI Director Robert Mueller said al-Qaida continues to present a “critical threat to the homeland” and warned that “homegrown terrorists” not directly linked to al-Qaida posed a threat as well.

After terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, McConnell said the threat from cyberattacks to U.S. information systems is the most pressing issue. President Bush signed a classified directive in January outlining steps the federal government is taking to protect its networks.

“It is no longer sufficient for the U.S. government to discover cyber intrusions in its networks, clean up the damage and take legal or political steps to deter further intrusions,” McConnell said.

On Cuba, he said the intelligence community is not expecting an immediate political convulsion if ailing President Fidel Castro dies.

“We assess the political situation in Cuba will at least remain stable in the first few months after Fidel’s death,” McConnell said.

But policy missteps on the part Castro’s successor could lead to mass migration of Cubans to the United States, he said.

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