The international al-Qaeda terrorist organization may seem dormant but isn't dead by a long shot, says a former senior CIA official, who claims the group is waiting to carry out another massive attack on the United States.

In a report released last week by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, ex-CIA man Rolf Mowatt-Karssen warned that threats by al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to attack Western nations are not “empty rhetoric,” but rather are a top goal.

The group has access to sophisticated weaponry and technology, argued Mowatt-Karssen, who added that bin Laden's ultimate aim is to destroy the U.S. economy and overthrow pro-Western governments in the Muslim world.

The 23-year CIA veteran led the agency's internal task force on al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction after the 9/11 simultaneous multi-site terrorist attacks left more than 3,000 people dead in New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. Mowatt-Larssen was later named director of intelligence and counterintelligence for the Energy Department.

Al Qaeda has long had the capability of carrying out a biological terror attack as well, Mowatt-Karssen said, but has chosen not to do so, for reasons unknown. Its biological weapon of choice, he added, was anthrax. The group has also maintained its interest in nuclear weapons, but “realized they needed a lucky break. That meant buying or stealing fissile material or acquiring a stolen bomb.” 

In 2003, an intelligence tip led to a crackdown in Saudi Arabia on a network of al-Qaeda operatives. The arrests -- and probable deaths -- of some of the operatives instantly stilled the terrorist chatter about al-Qaeda nuclear weaponry plans that were being monitored. Since that time, no one has been able to tell whether the al-Qaeda plan under discussion  – a plot to obtain three stolen Russian nuclear devices –  was abandoned, or merely put on hold.