This Article is From Aug 04, 2015

Islamic State or al-Qaida? U.S. Officials Split Over Biggest Threat

Islamic State or al-Qaida? U.S. Officials Split Over Biggest Threat

File Photo of Islamic State terrorists

Washington: The Obama administration's top intelligence, counterterrorism and law enforcement officials are divided over which terrorist group poses the biggest threat to the U.S. homeland, the Islamic State or al-Qaida and its affiliates.

The split reflects a rising concern that the Islamic State poses a more immediate danger because of its unprecedented social media campaign, using sophisticated online messaging to inspire followers to launch attacks across the United States.

Many intelligence and counterterrorism officials warn, however, that Qaida operatives in Yemen and Syria are capitalizing on the turmoil in those countries to plot much larger "mass-casualty" attacks, including bringing down airliners carrying hundreds of passengers.

This is not an academic argument. It will influence how the government allocates billions of dollars in counterterrorism funds, and how it assigns thousands of federal agents, intelligence analysts and troops to combat a multipronged threat that senior officials say is changing rapidly.

The issue already has prompted a White House review of its counterterrorism policy toward the Islamic State. And the National Counterterrorism Center has diverted analysts working on longer-term extremist threats to focus on the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, intelligence officials said.

U.S. officials say this is not a black-and-white debate between those who worry more about al-Qaida as the main threat to the homeland and those who say it is the Islamic State. Both are concerning. It is more a shift in emphasis.

The White House seems to be leaning toward the Islamic State, increasingly alarmed by what Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, recently called the group's "unique threat" to the United States.

The debate is evolving in real time, thus there have been no large shifts in money or personnel yet in one direction or the other. But it marks the first time that senior U.S. officials have spoken so openly about the evolution.

"ISIS is all about the quantity of attacks. Al-Qaida, on the other hand, is focused on the quality of the attack," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "For that reason, al-Qaida still, in that respect, very much concerns me even more than the quantity of ISIS attacks."
 
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