In a speech in Washington, DC in August 2008, Ted Gistaro, then the United States national intelligence officer for transnational threats, painted a picture of a resurgent Al-Qaeda core, with an increasingly secure safe-haven in Pakistan's tribal areas. Al-Qaeda had, in Gistaro's view, "maintained or strengthened key elements of its capability to attack the United States over the past year", despite the deaths of a number of its key figures.
