US is now safer than on 9/11, 2001: Rice

WASHINGTON: The United States has "badly hurt" the Al-Qaeda movement and is clearly a safer place than the day five years ago when Al-Qaeda hijackers carried out their attack on New York and Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday.      

Rice said that stronger intelligence sharing with nations around the world since September 11, 2001, had been a key to US gains in the so-called "war on terror".       

"I think it's clear that we are safer, but not really yet safe," she said in one of a series of interviews ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attack which killed some 3,000 people. We're more secure, our ports are more secure, our airports are more secure," she said.         

"We have a much stronger intelligence sharing operation, not just within the country where we've broken down walls between law enforcement and intelligence agencies to get all of the information to break up terrorist plots, but also across the world," she said.             

Rice said the better intelligence cooperation had helped deal damaging blows to Al-Qaeda.          

"We've clearly hurt badly the Al-Qaeda organization that planned and plotted and executed September 11, capturing many of their major field generals," she said.     

She specifically referred to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the September 11 attacks, and suspected bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah who were moved last week from secret CIA custody to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.