Top-level officials in the United States and United Kingdom have made several recent statements about their countries’ successes fighting terrorism and arguing that they have severely hampered the abilities of terrorists to operate.

“Bin Laden can't get an operational effort off the ground without it being detected ahead of time and being thwarted. Their ability to reach is nonexistent,” Dell L. Daily, the State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator told the Washington Post.

The remark is one of the boldest statements to come out from the government about the threat from the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization which is responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed about 3,000 Americans.

Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, the United Kingdom’s domestic intelligence service, has made similar boasts in recent days, saying that the threat of homegrown terrorism had decreased over the past year and a half.

“There have been 86 successful convictions since January 2007 of whom approaching half pleaded guilty, which has had a chilling effect on the enthusiasm of the networks. They're keeping their heads down," Evans was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.

Evans also stated that there were approximately 2,000 people in the United Kingdom involved in terrorist activity. He also warned that the 2012 Olympics in London could provide a tempting target for terrorists, and there was increasing concern about the activities of members of the Irish Republican Army that disagreed with their leaders’ disavowal of violence.