CIA Director Leon Panetta says less than 100 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan

The Justice Department is also trying to prosecute a case against five Blackwater guards who had opened fire on a crowded Baghdad street in 2007.

When asked about why the U.S. government is now back to hiring a company that they're suing regarding similar "services rendered", Panetta says sadly, there wasn't much competition for Xe when they bid for the security contract.

Since I've become director, I've asked us to -- asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is, Xe now. And to ensure that first and foremost, that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We're doing our own operations. That's important, that we not contract that out to anybody. But at the same time, I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You've got a lot of forward bases. We've got a lot of attacks on some of these bases. We've got to have security. Unfortunately, there are a few companies that provide that kind of security. The State Department relies on them, we rely on them to a certain extent.

So we bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that was underbid everyone else by about $26 million. And a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they have shaped up their act. So their really was not much choice but to accept that contract. But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very conscious about any of those contracts and we're reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company.

Panetta began the first part of his interview with Tapper discussing Afghanistan.  He defined (again) what "winning" actually means (that the Afghans accept responsibility and are able to deploy an effective army and police force to maintain stability), but said that though al-Qaeda is our arch enemy, there really aren't that many of those terrorists in a place where we have 94,000 troops.

PANETTA: I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaida is actually relatively small. I think at most, we're looking at maybe 60 to 100, maybe less. It's in that vicinity. There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan.

(Read our post on John McCain's appearance on Meet the Press for more Sunday morning Afghanistan commentary).