NEW YORK, Nov 8: A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official said On Monday that Al Qaeda was now a 'global Islamic insurgency' rather than a terrorist organization and charged that the Bush administration had failed to recognise that it posed a much different threat than previously believed.

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and author of a book critical of the administration's handling of the fight against terrorism, said in an interview with the New York Times that the government "doesn't respect the threat" because most officials still regard Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization that can be defeated by arresting or killing its operatives one at a time.

He noted that President Bush and other officials had repeatedly said two-thirds of the leadership of Al Qaeda had been killed or captured, but the figure was misleading because it referred to the leaders who were in place as of Sept. 11, 2001.

Al Qaeda had replaced many of those dead or captured operatives and continued to thrive as a guiding force for Islamic extremists around the world, he said

"I think Al Qaeda has suffered substantially since 9/11, and it may have slowed down its operations, but to take the two-thirds number as a yardstick is a fantasy," Mr Scheuer told the paper.

"To say that they have only one-third of their leadership left is a misunderstanding. That is looking at it from a law enforcement perspective. They pay a lot of attention to leadership succession, and so one of the main tenets of Al Qaeda is to train people to succeed leaders who are captured or killed."

Mr Scheuer served as chief of the CIA's bin Laden station from 1996 through 1999 and so knows the history of the government's pre-9/11 efforts against Al Qaeda. He testified before the Sept. 11 commission, but is now critical of the commission for refusing to identify by name any top officials who should be held responsible for failing to prevent the attacks.