"We believe that we retain enough military and intelligence capabilities to disrupt the broader capacity of Al-Qaeda to successfully reconstitute a sustained homeland threat to the United States," the senior official told reporters.
The official emphasized that the United States would counter any al-Qaeda resurgence directly and by exerting pressure upon the Taliban to honour its pledge not to allow Afghanistan to again be used as a base for attacks against the US. The US intelligence community believes al-Qaeda does not possess the "external plotting capability" at present to threaten the American homeland, the senior Biden administration official said.
Earlier on Tuesday, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported, citing administration sources, that President Joe Biden plans to publicly set the deadline for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan to 11 September, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
