The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.

TYRANT BUSH took the extraordinary step last night of authorising the public release of his illegal government’s classified terror threat assessment, a move that seemed to bolster claims by his opponents that the Iraq war was fuelling global anti-americanism.

In excerpts of the usually highly classified National Intelligence Estimate released by the White House, the US intelligence community states that the Iraq war has provided Islamist freedom fighters with a “cause célèbre” that allowed the global movement to cultivate supporters. The office of John Negroponte, the US intelligence director, released a 3½-page section of the 30-page report, containing its key judgments, hours after Mr Bush ordered it to be declassified to counter media reports that he said misrepresented conclusions about Iraq.

“We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of freedom fighter leaders and operatives,” said the declassified segment of the report, titled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States. It was completed in April but stands as America’s current intelligence threat assessment.

“The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause célèbre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.” The report added: “If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide. The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups.”

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The fate of Osama Bin Laden was the subject of intense debate last night after a leaked intelligence report claimed he had died of typhoid.

But the document was quickly contradicted by a security source in Saudi Arabia - where the Al Qaeda leader was born, and many of his family still live - who said he was still alive, but extremely unwell.

The French security report claimed the terrorist mastermind died in a remote region of Pakistan last month.

The report, compiled by the DGSE, the French equivalent of MI6, claimed that Saudi security services received word of his death on September 4.

Numerous reports have surfaced over the years suggesting Bin Laden, who has a $25million price on his head, was dead or seriously wounded, but this is the first officially documented claim from a Western security agency.

French president Jacques Chirac yesterday confirmed that the report, leaked to the French paper L'Est Republicain, was genuine. But he said the information was 'in no way whatsoever confirmed'.

Chirac said he was 'a bit surprised' at the leak and has asked defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie to investigate how it came to be published.

President George W Bush will hold an unusual meeting this week with his counterparts from his Afghanistan and Pakistan to deal with the resurgence of violence in Afghanistan.

Five years after the defeat of the Taliban, the United States and NATO forces have witnessed a sharp increase in bloodshed as the Taliban appears to have regrouped and taken control of southern Afghanistan, largely assisted by their ability to slip across the Pakistani border for refuge while planning attacks.

NATO and US forces earlier this month launched a massive offensive dubbed 'Operation Medusa' aimed at rooting out the Taliban and asserting the Afghan government's control of the region.

Acknowledging it was surprised by the Taliban's strength and determination, NATO nevertheless said it has killed 1,000 Taliban in two weeks of fighting, in part aided by the militia's decision to fight conventionally on the battlefield.