By Ralph Dannheisser
Washington File Congressional Correspondent

Washington -- Hundreds of hard-core al-Qaida terrorists, backed by many thousands of supporters around the world, remain poised to strike, two FBI experts on terrorism say.

J.T. Caruso, acting assistant director of the bureau's Counterterrorism Division, and Thomas Wilshere, deputy chief of the International Terrorism Operational Section, made the assessment December 18 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism.

Wilshere told the panel that the number of al-Qaida members capable of carrying out sophisticated bombing attacks and the like is "probably in the hundreds," while members of affiliated terrorist groups like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad may number in the "small thousands."

Their ranks are swelled by like-minded would-be terrorists -- ones whose "skill level is not yet as high, but they have bad intent." That element numbers "in the tens of thousands, and they are scattered throughout the world," he said.

Asked by the panel's chairman, Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California), how deep the members' loyalty to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden runs -- and whether their zeal would survive his elimination from the picture -- Caruso responded, "You'll find individuals who run the gamut with respect to commitment."

But Caruso stressed that just getting rid of bin Laden would not end the al-Qaida threat. "We need to go beyond one leader and go down into middle management, or at least upper middle management" to disrupt the group's activities, he said.

"There's going to be a stuttering in the organization's momentum" upon the death or capture of bin Laden, but the effect may be limited to reducing the terrorist output by 40 or 50 percent, Caruso projected.

That echoed his comments in his prepared testimony, in which he traced al-Qaida's activities back to its founding by bin Laden and others in the early 1980s as a cog in the war effort in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union.

Given its long history and level of commitment, "it is one thing to disrupt an organization such as al-Qaida, it is another to totally dismantle and destroy it." That latter task "must truly remain an international effort, with international cooperation at all levels, in order to be successful," he said.

And, Caruso stressed, the fight must involve continuing diplomatic and intelligence efforts in addition to the current military campaign.

Asked by Boxer whether any al-Qaida camps are known to exist in the United States, Wilshere responded, "Other people involved in Jihadist training have looked at the possibility of setting up training camps" in this country. But he said they found locations in Europe "more benign" for their purposes.

Besides those in Afghanistan, he said, there is known to be a concentration of training camps operating in South Lebanon.

Another witness before the subcommittee, terrorism consultant Larry Johnson, concurred that "apart from Afghanistan, there is no other country that has as many terrorist camps, as many active terrorists" as Lebanon.

"We've allowed Lebanon a pass, and that must come to an end," declared Johnson, who served as deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993.

More broadly, Johnson said, "While we may never be able to eliminate or neutralize every terrorist cell willing to murder innocent civilians, we know from experience that these cells cannot thrive without the support of a state."

Michele Flournoy, co-author of a book on the U.S. campaign against terrorism just published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based public policy research institution, said the effort requires a four-pronged approach: destroying the terrorist groups, eliminating state support for terrorism, advancing homeland defense, and dealing with the underlying conditions that allow terrorists to flourish.

This last component, in turn, has four aspects, Flournoy said:

-- addressing the problem of "failed states" and restoring "a measure of a functioning state and stability."

-- reexamining U.S. Middle East strategy. "We are perceived as supporting governments that are not as responsive as they should be to their populations" and must "pressure them to modernize." She specifically cited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan as falling in this category.

-- making better use of foreign assistance to further U.S. foreign policy goals.

-- broadening public diplomacy efforts. "Over the last decade or more, the mechanisms that allow us to get our messages out... have been allowed to atrophy severely."