Al Qaeda's profile: slimmer but menacing

As US bombs strafed Afghan-istan one night in December 2001, the incessant blasts killed, among others, Mohammed Atef, Al Qaeda's No. 3 in charge of military operations. The next March, a US-Pakistani sting netted operations chief Abu Zubaydah, whom US intelligence officials decreed the next No. 3, tucked away in one of Pakistan's sprawling metropolises. A year later, a slumbering Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the third No. 3 - was abducted in a dawn raid. More recently, the last known No. 3, spiritual counselor and operations coordinator Saif Al-Adel, was put under house arrest in Iran.

The story of Al Qaeda's multiple No. 3s is a story of how far the US has come in infiltrating and subduing Osama bin Laden's worldwide terror network in the two years since 9/11 - but also of the huge tasks that remain. These four men are part of the US success story in the war on terror: They're among the two-thirds of Al Qaeda leadership that US officials say have been captured or killed as a result of one of the most concerted worldwide dragnets in US history - and intelligence garnered from some of those detained.

Yet they're also the face of American setbacks, an Al Qaeda that bounces back like mercury dropped on a laboratory floor. The result, say intelligence officials, is that two years after the cataclysmic attacks on US soil, Al Qaeda is a weaker, more diffuse organization, but one that can still mount substantial attacks - in the US and abroad.

Indeed, the vanquishing of four No. 3s shows how constantly leaders must move and change tactics. But it also sheds light on Al Qaeda's organization and deployment - and, especially, on the depth of its following.

"Al Qaeda had a much deeper bench than we'd imagined before 9/11, and it clearly had a corporate succession plan," says Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terror at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "It's now clear that Al Qaeda's strength was not just its hard core, which existed before 9/11, but the layers below - and those other groups affiliated with Al Qaeda."

New insights have led government officials to say Al Qaeda is as dangerous, or more so, than it was before 9/11. And they continue to say the war on terror won't be won in months, but over several years.

"Despite these strikes against the leadership of Al Qaeda, it remains a potent, highly capable, and extremely dangerous terrorist network - the No. 1 terrorist threat to the US today," the FBI's chief counterterrorism official, Larry Mefford, told a Congressional committee in late June. "We remain concerned about Al Qaeda's ability to mount simultaneous and large-scale terrorist attacks."

To be sure, there have been tremendous successes in the effort to eradicate Al Qaeda. The Taliban regime was swiftly swept aside in Afghanistan, depriving Al Qaeda of its operational base. Since then, some 3,000 members have been detained. Treasury Department officials have blocked $140 million in Al Qaeda funds.

One measurement of gains, of course, is the prevention of additional "spectaculars," as government officials call strikes on the homeland, like those of 9/11. That's no small feat. But it's difficult, most experts and government officials say, to set other benchmarks because there isn't a firm number of followers against which to measure thinning of the ranks.

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