Terror threat

CIA Director Leon Panetta warned al-Qaida is changing its tactics in a way that makes terror plots harder to detect.

Panetta, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered a threat assessment Tuesday to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. All agreed al-Qaida would try to attack U.S. interests in the next six months.

Panetta said the prime threat isn't an attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, but that "al-Qaida is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect." He described the new danger as a "lone-wolf strategy," in which relatively new recruits with little training are sent to carry out attacks.

Such apparently was the case of the Dec. 25 attempted bombing of a jetliner headed to Detroit. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been linked to an al-Qaida group in Yemen, has been charged in the attack.

There has been controversy regarding charging Abdulmutallab in civilian courts rather than in a military setting but Mueller said that arrangement hasn't stopped authorities from gaining important information from terror suspects, including Abdulmutallab.

Blair said another intelligence-community concern is the growing number of computer attacks.