Panetta: Qaida ‘Still Real Threat’ to U.S. Despite Bin Laden’s Death

Despite the killings of Osama bin Laden and radical U.S.-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaida terror network remains a "real threat to the United States," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a TV interview late Wednesday.

CBS News released excerpts of an interview with Panetta scheduled to run Sunday, in which the Pentagon chief discusses U.S. strategy to disband al-Qaida's global networks.

"We're going after al-Qaida, wherever they're at," Panetta told CBS in the interview excerpt.

"And clearly, we're confronting al-Qaida in Pakistan. We're confronting the nodes of al-Qaida in Yemen, in Somalia, in North Africa. ... and obviously whatever al-Qaida links are involved in Afghanistan," he said.

Have U.S. forces defeated al-Qaida?

"Not yet," Panetta said. "They're still a real threat. There's still al-Qaida out there. And we've got to continue to put pressure on them wherever they're at."

Panetta however said that U.S. forces have "undermined their leadership significantly."

Of the network's 10 main leaders listed after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, only one is still alive: Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over after bin Laden was shot dead in a dramatic U.S. commando raid in Pakistan in May.

In the past year, eight of al-Qaida's top 20 leaders were eliminated, most by missiles fired from U.S. drones operating under an expanded covert warfare effort launched by President Barack Obama after taking office in January 2009.

Those killed include Awlaki, slain in Yemen in a U.S. drone strike on September 30.

Former CIA chief Panetta took over as defense secretary in July, replacing Robert Gates, a holdover from the presidency of George Bush.