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Intelligence on al Qaeda getting better

Stratfor:

Western tensions over the safety of corporate assets in the Middle East -- particularly in Saudi Arabia -- have ratcheted higher during the past month amid a stream of government security warnings and several deadly attacks and militant shootouts.

Though the concerns and the level of violence within Saudi Arabia are hardly unprecedented, the credibility of alerts issued by the United States and other Western governments is on the rise. Consider the following examples:

# April 13: The United States issued a Warden Message cautioning Westerners about threats against diplomatic and other official facilities and neighborhoods in Riyadh. Two days later, a U.S. travel warning "strongly urged" Americans to leave the kingdom. On April 19 and 20, Saudi officials announced seizures of vehicles carrying explosives. On April 21, a car bomb was detonated in front of a Saudi intelligence facility in Riyadh, killing several people.

# April 27: Jordanian officials claimed to have foiled an al Qaeda chemical bomb plot targeting the country's intelligence services. The plot allegedly involved trucks packed with 20 tons of explosives.

# April 29: The U.S. State Department issued a worldwide caution, warning of deep concerns over the safety of U.S. interests abroad -- and noting that government officials have not ruled out a nonconventional al Qaeda attacks in the United States or elsewhere. On May 1, gunmen killed five Westerners -- including two Americans -- at the offices of Swiss oil contractor ABB Lummus in Yanbu. The shooters later were praised in a statement, purportedly from al Qaeda's top official in Saudi Arabia, carried on the Islamist Web site Sawt al-Jihad.

# European security services recently have announced several militant roundups and "foiled plots" against specific targets. On April 21, British newspapers reported the discovery of a bombing plot against a football stadium -- possibly the field used by Manchester United -- and the arrest of 10 suspects. A well-placed counterterrorism source later told Stratfor that the sweep -- the second major roundup in Britain in less than a month -- was conducted less to thwart a specific attack than as a very public pre-emptive action to reassure citizens of their safety. On May 4, Turkish police said they detained 16 suspected members of the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam, accused of planning bombing attacks against the NATO summit that is scheduled to take place in Istanbul in June.

The contrast with past intelligence warnings is stark: In December 2003, the State Department authorized the voluntary departure of diplomats' family members -- but more than a month after the bombing of a Western housing compound in Riyadh killed 17 people. A similar communiqué, which ordered the departure of nonessential U.S. personnel and their dependents, was issued May 13, 2003 -- a day after another housing compound bombing that claimed 34 lives.

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While it is clear some weaknesses remain -- for example, Washington had no warning prior to the March 11 train bombings in Madrid -- it appears that U.S. counterterrorism collection has improved greatly in the past few months. Sources in Washington tell Stratfor that both human intelligence and technical collection capabilities -- such as wiretaps and other methods -- significantly have increased in conjunction with coordinated intelligence and law enforcement efforts around the world. Western intelligence services and analytical think tanks -- such as MI6, the Center for Strategic International Studies and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation -- along with the services of "friendly" Middle Eastern nations such as Jordan, specifically have aided Washington's tactical and strategic capabilities and helped in interdicting attacks.

Read it all. Actionable intelligence is getting better.