De defensa

Tous les chefs du renseignement et des services de sécurité US sont d’accord. Le terrorisme est (re)devenu la première menace contre les USA. Al Qaïda va frapper, certainement dans les six mois qui viennent. Cette évolution mesure l’extraordinaire recul des évaluations américanistes de la situation du monde, après une brève amélioration, au début du mandat d’Obama, qui avait fait croire à la possibilité que la nouvelle administration rompe avec la “politique de l’idéologie et de l’instinct” qui domine les USA depuis 9/11.

Un article du New York Times du 3 février 2010 nous fait apprécier cette évolution.

«America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that Al Qaeda and its affiliates had made it a high priority to attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months.

»The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.”

»At Tuesday’s hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Mr. Blair to assess the possibility of an attempted attack in the United States in the next three to six months. He replied, “The priority is certain, I would say” — a response that was reaffirmed by the top officials of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.

»Citing a recent wave of terrorist plots, including the failed Dec. 25 attempt to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit, Mr. Blair and other intelligence officials told a Senate panel that Al Qaeda had adjusted its tactics to more effectively strike American targets domestically and abroad. “The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11,” said Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director. “It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect.”

»As the C.I.A. continues its drone attacks aimed at Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, the officials also said that the network’s splinter groups in Yemen and Somalia were taking on more importance.

»But Mr. Blair began his annual threat testimony before Congress by saying that the threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and other computer networks was growing, as an increasingly sophisticated group of enemies had “severely threatened” the sometimes fragile systems undergirding the country’s information infrastructure. “Malicious cyberactivity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication,” he told the committee.

»His emphasis on the threat points up the growing concerns among American intelligence officials about the potentially devastating results of a coordinated attack on the nation’s technology apparatus, sometimes called a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”»

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