WASHINGTON (AP) - Al-Qaida can be expected to attempt an attack
on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S.
intelligence officials told Congress Tuesday.

The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United
States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including
"clean" recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts,
CIA Director Leon Panetta said. The chilling warning comes as
Christmas Day airline attack suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab is
cooperating with federal investigators, a federal law enforcement
official said Tuesday.

Al-Qaida is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger
violence on their own, Panetta said.

The annual assessment of the nation's terror threats provided no
startling new terror trends, but amplified growing concerns since
the Christmas Day airline attack in Detroit that militants are
growing harder to detect and moving more quickly in their plots.

"The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like
9/11. It is that al-Qaida is adapting its methods in ways that
oftentimes make it difficult to detect," Panetta told the Senate
Intelligence Committee.

Several senators tangled over whether suspected terrorists
should be tried in civilian or military court. At the same time, a
bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation that would
force the Obama administration to backtrack on its plans to try
Sept. 11 defendants in federal court in New York and use military
tribunals instead.

As al-Qaida presses new terror plots, it is increasingly relying
on new recruits with minimal training and simple devices to carry
out attacks, Panetta said as part of the terror assessment to
Congress.

Panetta also warned of the danger of extremists acting alone:
"It's the lone-wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention
to as the main threat to this country," he said.

The hearing comes just over a month since a failed attempt to
bring down an airliner in Detroit, allegedly by Abdulmutullab, a
Nigerian. And the assessment comes only a few months after U.S.
Army Maj. Nidal Hassan was accused of single-handedly attacking his
fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said with changes
made since the Dec. 25 attack, U.S. intelligence would he able to
identify and stop someone like the Detroit bomber before he got on
the plane. But he warned a more careful and skilled would-be
terrorist might not be detected.

FBI Director Robert Mueller defended the FBI's handling of the
Detroit attempted bombing attack, disputing assertions that agents
short-circuited more intelligence insights from the Nigerian
suspect by quickly providing him with his Miranda rights to remain
silent.

Mueller was asked by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whether the interrogation of
Abdulmutullab continues despite the fact that the suspect had
already been read his legal right to remain silent. Mueller
replied: "Yes."

Mueller said that in "case after case," terrorists have
provided actionable intelligence even after they were given their
rights and charged with crimes. Mueller said they know such
cooperation can result in shorter sentences or other consideration
from the government.

Mueller also said that a new FBI-CIA interrogation team created
in August to replace controversial CIA interrogations had been used
several times already.

That seemed to contradict what Blair told Congress in January.
He said at a hearing on Abdulmutallab that he thought the
interrogation team should have been used to question the suspect
but later clarified his remarks to say that the teams were not used
because they were not yet fully operational.

Intelligence officials confirmed Tuesday the High-Value
Interrogation Group is not yet fully formed but said joint
interrogation teams are available for use.

Panetta confirmed that the agency participates on the team,
though not in a lead role.

"They're backup, but they are doing some of the interviewing,"
he said.

Hundreds of terror suspects have already been convicted in
civilian federal courts, including convicted shoe bomber Richard
Reid.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered a bill Tuesday that
would prohibit the government from using Justice Department funds
to prosecute suspects charged in the Sept. 11 attack in civilian
courts.

The move comes on the heels of the Obama administration's
decision to rethink whether it would try self-proclaimed 9/11
mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in a New York City courtroom.

The proposed law would cover people who legally could be
prosecuted by a military commission, applying to terror suspects
who are not U.S. citizens. By Tuesday evening, the bill had support
from 18 senators, mostly Republicans.

During the terror assessment hearing, Blair also warned of the
growing cyberthreat, saying computer-related attacks have become
dynamic and malicious.

Obama has promised to make cybersecurity a priority in his
administration, but the president's new budget asks for a decrease
in funds for the Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity
division.

The government's first quadrennial homeland security review
states that high consequence and large-scale cyberattacks could
massively disable or hurt international financial, commercial and
physical infrastructure.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said these types
of cyberattacks could cripple the movement of people and goods
around the world and bring vital social and economic programs to a
halt.