Al-Qaeda chief's message led to terror alert

An intercepted secret message between al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack was the trigger that set off the current shutdown of many US embassies, two officials told The Associated Press on Monday.
A US intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat said al-Zawahri's message was picked up several weeks ago and appeared to initially target Yemeni interests. The threat was expanded to include American or other Western sites abroad, officials said, indicating the target could be a single embassy, a number of posts or some other site. Lawmakers have said it was a massive plot in the final stages, but they have offered no specifics.
The intelligence official said the message was sent to Nasser al-Wahishi, the head of the terror network's organisation, based in Yemen, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.
American spies and intelligence analysts on Monday scoured email, phone calls and radio communications between al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and the organisation's senior leaders to determine the timing and targets of the planned attack.
The call from al-Zawahri, who took over for Osama bin Laden after US Navy commandos killed the al-Qaeda leader in May 2011, led the Obama administration to close diplomatic posts from Mauritania on Africa's west coast through the Middle East to Bangladesh, east of India, and as far south as Madagascar.
The US did decide to reopen some posts on Monday, including well-defended embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad.
Authorities in Yemen, meanwhile, released the names of 25 wanted al-Qaeda suspects and said those people had been planning terrorist attacks targeting “foreign offices and organisations and Yemeni installations” in the capital Sanaa and other cities across the country.
The Yemeni government also went on high alert Monday, stepping up security at government facilities and checkpoints.
Officials in the US wouldn't say who intercepted the initial suspect communications the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency or one of the other intelligence agencies that kicked off the sweeping pre-emptive closure of US facilities. But an intelligence official said the controversial NSA programmes that gather data on American phone calls or track Internet communications with suspected terrorists played no part in detecting the initial tip. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorised to discuss the spying publicly.
Once the plot was detected, NSA analysts could use the programmes that leaker Edward Snowden revealed to determine whom the plotters may have contacted around the world. Snowden revealed one programme that collected telephone data such as the numbers called and the duration of calls on US telephone networks. Another programme searched global Internet usage. Therefore, if a new name was detected in the initial chatter, the name or phone number of that person could be run through the NSA databases to see whom he called or what websites or emails he visited.
The surveillance is part of the continuing effort to track the spread of al-Qaeda from its birthplace in Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries where governments and security forces are weaker and less welcoming to the US or harder for American counterterrorist forces to penetrate such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Mali and Libya as well as Yemen, already home to al-Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is headed by al-Wahishi.