WHILE THE POST MAKES THE CASE FOR WAR:

Al Qaeda's Top Primed To Collapse, U.S. Says: Mohammed's Arrest, Data Breed Optimism (Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt, March 16, 2003, Washington Post)

The United States is within reach of dismantling the leadership of the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Bush administration officials and U.S. intelligence experts said.

CIA and FBI officials are cautious in public not to overstate their optimism about breaking up al Qaeda and capturing Osama bin Laden, the organization's leader. But people who receive regular briefings on U.S. counterterrorism operations said the arrest and subsequent cooperation under interrogation of al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed this month have given them concrete reasons to come to this conclusion.

"I believe the tide has turned in terms of al Qaeda," said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer. "We're at the top of the hill."

Goss's sentiment was echoed by a dozen other intelligence experts and law enforcement officials with regular access to information about U.S. counterterrorism operations. "For the first time," Goss said, "they have more to fear from us than we have to fear from them."

Officials cautioned that there was no certainty they could disrupt attacks already set in motion by al Qaeda or other affiliated groups, and said they were still concerned about possible bombings and attacks on a smaller scale than those mounted against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last week that he believes suicide attacks in this country may be inevitable.

But officials said the reasons for their optimism about al Qaeda are threefold.

Mohammed's capture in the Pakistan city of Rawalpindi on March 1, they said, cut off the organization's key operational leader from followers poised to execute attacks. The cache of computer and paper files found in the house where Mohammed was living has turned out to be "a mother lode" of information, said one intelligence official. It has provided "hundreds of leads" about the organization's financial pipelines, funders, followers, movement of operatives and targets, another official said.

In addition, Mohammed began providing information to his CIA captors soon after his arrest, officials said. Some of the information is unverifiable, said one U.S. government official, but other information is "things we didn't know and are very glad we know now." Mohammed is also providing translations of coded letters found among his belongings, U.S. sources said.

Although the precise nature of the information, including any planned attacks, could not be learned, one official said the information has already allowed U.S. law enforcement officials to improve security at certain targets Mohammed identified. It has yet to lead to any further detentions of suspected terrorists, the official said.

Because the CIA and FBI are much more familiar than they were a year ago with the organization and individuals involved in al Qaeda, they are more able to put the new leads to use. Also, with a handful of other high-ranking al Qaeda members imprisoned and undergoing CIA interrogation, the information "can be bounced off five other senior guys now anxious to tell us what they know," said one knowledgeable intelligence expert.

Because of these factors, the information "will lead to geometric progress," Goss said. New leads "are a trickle that has turned into a torrent."

The American press likes to maintain the fiction that it is non-partisan and above politics, but compare this story from the relatively pro-war Post to the hysterical "al Qaeda is winning" piece from the anti-war Times below and it's awfully hard to believe that the views of the editors aren't driving the very different perceptions we're being offered on the news pages, eh? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2003 8:24 AM