Terrorism, U.s. Intelligence | featured news

Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects' mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack....

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.

The US has expanded its secret intelligence forces in Africa, with Special Operations forces establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

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.

U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a "smoking gun" that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.