NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing
Defense Official
Tuesday, February 19, 2002 - 1:30 p.m. EST
(Background briefing on the Al Qaeda terrorist network)


STAFF : Good afternoon. Today we will have a background briefing to update you on the situation with al Qaeda and the threat that it poses. Just a quick reminder about the ground rules -- or to put it another way, the way we define the word "background." It's on the record, meaning all the words that are said can be quoted directly, and we will post a transcript. And the attribution should be "Defense official." And no cameras or, you know, recording for broadcast. If you want to record for your reporting purposes, that's fine, but not for broadcast.

Q : So this is not a "senior Defense official"?

STAFF : No, this is a "defense official," that's right. We had this big discussion. This is a "defense official."

DEFENSE OFFICIAL : al Qaeda has sort of lost its aura of invincibility. It basically had successes in 1998 in the East Africa embassy bombings, the Cole attack, and 11th September -- all basically tactical successes, as they viewed it, with very little serious ramifications for the organization, at least in their eyes.

However, after 11th September and the coalition military actions in Afghanistan, the effectiveness and how quick it happened, it basically knocked them down a peg or two, at least as far as -- also, you know, this goes back to the recruiting of new recruits.

If you have an organization that has basically won every victory, and all of a sudden they have at least a loss to some degree, the ones that are borderline thinking of joining the organization may back off a little bit, saying, "I don't want to end up in Guantanamo Bay. I don't want to end up in, you know, a body bag. I don't want to end up, you know, trucking off to some jihad that may not work out for me."

So -- that said, al Qaeda -- you know, it's been disrupted. However -- and we believe that the leadership is probably going to go more decentralized. It's going to be more of a franchise-type thing.

Basically, you know, we view al Qaeda as still a very potent threat. However, as time goes on, if the operations continue, each little bit will degrade the organization, at least the way it operated before with a centralized planning node that would plan spectacular attacks, such as the East Africa embassy bombings, 11 September.

It may go more towards, again, the franchise, which is basically the operatives and the people out in the field make their choices what they want to go after, how they want to fund it, you know, whether they want to rob houses to fund.

You know, terrorism is not a very expensive thing to do. When you really get down to it, I mean, you know, to conduct an operation -- and again, it varies on the sophistication of what you need, but it -- for the bang for the buck of what you get, it's not the most expensive. It's not like a large program of missile technology and all these things that you have to put billions of dollars into. It's relatively cheap.

Q : Do you have any idea where the senior leaders are now -- the ones who are remaining?

DEFENSE OFFICIAL : Do we know where they are?

Q : Right. Are they gathered in any particular country, or are they --

DEFENSE OFFICIAL : No, not that we can say for definitively now. Obviously, we're keeping an eye out for the senior officials. But no, no.

Q : Do you believe he's still in Afghanistan?

DEFENSE OFFICIAL : I don't know. I mean, the intelligence is, you know -- all over the map, you know. I couldn't say for sure right now.