All of this comes with the caveat that there's way more in this week's National Intelligence Estimate than we see in the unclassified key judgments. But the description it gives for the presence that al-Qaeda maintains in Pakistan is rather understated.

Al-Qaeda has, the NIE says, "safehaven in the Pakistan Federal Administrative Tribal Areas." That much is no longer controversial among counterterrorism experts. But what the description neglects -- again, at least in the unclassified, introductory section -- is that al-Qaeda has a broader infrastructure inside the parts of Pakistan that General Pervez Musharraf controls as well. Josh Meyer in the Los Angeles Times takes a look at how deeply the jihadist infrastructure is burrowed:

In recent years, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials who focus on South Asia say they have watched with growing concern as Al Qaeda has moved men, money and recruiting and training operations into Pakistani cities such as Quetta and Karachi as well as less populated areas.

Militant Islamists are still a minority in Pakistan, commanding allegiance of a little more than 10% of the population, judging by election results. But Al Qaeda has been able to widen its sway throughout the country by strengthening alliances with fundamentalist religious groups, charities, criminal gangs, elements of the government security forces and even some political officials, these officials said.

Bin Laden's network also has strengthened ties to groups fighting for control of Kashmir, most of which is held by India, a broadly popular cause throughout Pakistan that has the backing of the government and military.

"It is a much bigger problem than just saying it is a bunch of tribal Islamists in the fringe areas," said Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert who served at the CIA, National Security Council and Pentagon and retired last year after 30 years of counterterrorism and policymaking experience.

Consider that most of the significant al-Qaeda captures by Musharraf's security services haven't come in the tribal areas. Both Khalid Shaikh Muhammed, the architect of 9/11, was nabbed in Rawalpindi, a stone's throw from the capitol city of Islamabad. His deputy, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was caught in Karachi. They got Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, involved in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, in Gujrat, south of the capitol. Same for technology specialist Mohammed Naeem Nour Khan, captured in the major city of Lahore.

It's most likely the case that had they ensconced themselves in the tribal areas, they'd be free men today. But that just raises the question of what it was they were doing in Pakistan proper -- who they were taking risks to meet and what access to revenues they possessed. Reidel points out to Meyer that the quality of the videotapes released by al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Zawahiri indicates that "they are not being produced in some primitive area but where you can get access to news media on a regular basis."

A counterterrorism official Meyer quotes said that no one in the U.S. national security bureaucracy is focusing on the tribal areas "to the exclusion" of the Pakistani center. Hopefully, that's true. After all, last month's violent outbursts by Islamabad's pro-Taliban Red Mosque provided a glaring example of the foothold that jihadist elements were able to seize even in the very capital of the country. On the other hand, U.S. officials are wary of destabilizing Pakistan by moving into the tribal areas, and that's a concern made all the more salient when considering overt U.S. involvement in, say, Karachi. Even if Meyer's counterterrorism source is describing U.S. focus correctly, it may be cold comfort.

Why might the public version of the NIE play down the extent to which al-Qaeda operates in Pakistan? Well, we are fighting this other war in Iraq, ostensibly to fight the "ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th." It was long overdue for the NIE to say plainly that al-Qaeda has any kind of safe haven in Pakistan, and President Bush took an enormous amount of criticism for it. Detailing the extent of it would hardly help the president's effort to buy time for the war in Iraq as a counterterrorism mission.