WASHINGTON, July 22 (AFP) - The United States is safer now than it was before the September 11 attacks, but al-Qaeda remains a deadly threat, senior CIA officials said.
"We are substantially safer than we were three years ago," one official said, as the commission investigating the 2001 attacks released its final report into the strikes that killed 3,000 people.
Osama bin Laden's network has more trouble planning attacks after losing their safe haven in Afghanistan, and facing major attacks by Pakistani forces, the official said.
"Pakistan has done heroic work," one official added.
Al-Qaeda leaders in Saudi Arabia and Yemen have also been "taken out," the official said, while warning that the group is "still highly lethal."
Al-Qaeda has struggled to replace the senior organizers already captured or killed, and the group's one-time financial backers are now more reluctant to give money because of stepped-up efforts to track down terrorist financing, the official said.
And despite the trans-Atlantic rift over the war in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the official said the Central Intelligence Agency's sister agencies in friendly countries have "crystallized an international, informal coalition."
"We have partners worldwide who are with us more clearly than they were ever before."
While the remnants of al-Qaeda remain a concern, one official said regional groups like Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and loosely affiliated groups like those likely behind the Madrid train bombings continue to pose a threat.
Asked if al-Qaeda could again orchestrate massive attacks like September 11, the official said: "We may see that again, but it doesn't take that to kill a lot of people."
"We have damaged this target (al-Qaeda), but this target looks at the United States as the brass ring."
Recent warnings about terrorist threats in the runup to the November 2 presidential election are based on "fairly specific information that they want to come after us," the official said.