al-Qaeda for the day

Josh Voorhees has a Slate article about al-Qaeda:

As was widely reported yesterday, the previously unknown threat that prompted the widespread closure of American embassies in the Middle East and North Africa this week allegedly came when the United States managed to intercept some type of message from the leader of al-Qaeda to the group's Yemen affiliate giving it the green light to carry out an unspecified attack. But in turns out, at least according to the Daily Beast's sources, that intercepted communication was a good deal more interesting that the initial reports suggested: It was, unnamed US officials now say, actually an international conference call that included more than twenty high-ranking al-Qaeda members who operate everywhere from Pakistan and Iraq to Nigeria and Uzbekistan.
"This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom," was how one US intelligence officer described it. "All you need to do is look at that list of places we shut down to get a sense of who was on the phone call." The Beast has more:

To be sure, the CIA had been tracking the threat for months. An earlier communication, between al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, the head of the terror network's organization based in Yemen, delivered through a courier, was picked up last month, according to three US intelligence officials. But the conference call provided a new sense of urgency for the US government, the sources said.
al-Qaeda leaders had assumed the conference calls, which give Zawahiri the ability to manage his organization from a remote location, were secure. But leaks about the original intercepts have likely exposed the operation that allowed the US intelligence community to listen in on the al-Qaeda board meetings.

Go check out the full report here. It provides the latest look into the alleged inner workings of al-Qaeda, which apparently has rather corporate-sounding job titles and requires its operatives to file monthly expense reports.
Something that I should have gone to greater lengths to point out: the Legion of Doom story is coming from unnamed sources, so it's difficult if not impossible to verify. And, as The Associated Press' Adam Goldman reminds us, there's nothing preventing a CIA official, particularly one not speaking on the record, from twisting the truth or downright lying. For more on that, head on over to Gawker, which has a nice rundown of the doubts a host of national security reporters have expressed with the latest unofficial official version of events offered to The Beast.

Rico says that Legion of Doom was already taken... But 'requires its operatives to file monthly expense reports'? A little too corporate for a terrorist organization, Rico thinks...