Qaeda Quotations

Recent information from ongoing investigations, detentions, and emerging-threat streams strongly suggests that al-Qaeda has considered using the southwest border to infiltrate the United States. Several al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.

While we continue to review the documentation and conduct interviews, and while there are some who allege specific documents exist, the Defense Department has not discovered any documentation that shows Mohamed Atta connected to al Qaeda prior to the attacks of 9/11.

And beyond that, the next issue is how do we guarantee one of these weapons, not necessarily this missile, but nuclear weapons ends up in the hands of Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.

We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press... really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.

Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.

It is clear that all roads lead to al Qaeda and pinpoint Osama bin Laden as having been involved in it.

I think a cyber-terrorism attack is overblown, though the threat exists. I think al Qaeda and other groups are more interested in symbolic terrorism, like what they did to the World Trade Center - suicide bombers or something that really has an effect and is meaningful to people.

The Al Qaeda network is very clever at making it as difficult as possible for authorities to secure their communications, for example. They're trained to avoid detection and to resist questioning. And convictions will only occur when the evidence holds up.

The United States does not view our authority to use military force against Al Qaeda as being restricted solely to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan.

The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.