Al Qaeda, U.s. Intelligence | featured news

Osama bin Laden's spokesman and son-in-law has been captured by U.S. intelligence officials, a senior congressman said Thursday, calling it a "very significant victory" in the ongoing fight against al-Qaida.

The U.S. government has authorized the killing of American citizens as part of its controversial drone campaign against al Qaeda even without intelligence that such Americans are actively plotting to attack a U.S. target, according to a Justice Department memo.

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

Al Qaeda's core organization is likely incapable of carrying out another mass-casualty attack on the scale of September 11, 2001, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said on Friday.

The suicide attacker killed eight people at a CIA compound in Afghanistan last week. He had been recruited to help U.S. spy agencies penetrate Al Qaeda, a former U.S. intelligence official says.