Daniel Benjamin, co-ordinator for counterterrorism at the state department, also noted that al-Qaeda groups were increasingly financing themselves through kidnappings, with terrorist organisations netting more than $100m from ransoms in recent years.
“We still face a very formidable network,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Singling out the threat posed by the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which he said had displayed “technical innovations and boldness and resolve”, he added: “We are coming through a period in which [al-Qaeda] affiliates have risen in their relative dangerousness and the death of bin Laden doesn’t diminish the threat they pose.”
Mr Benjamin’s comments come as US officials argue that bin Laden had retained an important operational role over the al-Qaeda network. Some maintain that his killing and the capture of a trove of data from his hideout represent the biggest single advance in the 10-year-long “war against al-Qaeda”.
Read more here: Al-Qaeda ‘still a formidable network’