[Free Beacon] Al Qaeda remains a number one terrorism concern to the U.S. intelligence community despite overwhelming media attention focused on the Islamic State, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center said Thursday.
"The fact that you see ISIS on the headlines every day and you read about ISIS being at the forefront of this global terrorism problem, it shouldn't detract from the idea that the government, we as an intelligence community, is still focused--I would argue as a matter of first priority--on al Qaeda as a threat to the U.S interests," Nick Rasmussen, the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center director, said at a national security forum on Capitol Hill.
Rasmussen said affiliates of the terrorist group operating in ungoverned territories such as Syria and Yemen represent the most immediate threat to the United States, particularly al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. |