REPORT: Embassy Scare Came From A 'Legion Of Doom' Conference Call Of Al Qaeda Affiliates

The U.S. government announced a terror alert and closed embassies in 22 countries last week after intercepting a conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders in Pakistan and representatives more than 20 al Qaeda operatives throughout the region, three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence told Eli Lake and Josh Rogin of The Daily Beast.

“This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” one U.S. intelligence officer told the Beast, in reference referring to the coalition of villains featured in the cartoon Super Friends.“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.”

Officials said that al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and various al Qaeda leaders — including representatives from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), AQ in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and AQ in Uzbekistan — vaguely discussed plans for a pending attack and "mentioned that a team or teams were already in place for such an attack," according to the Beast.

On Tuesday Richard Engel of NBC News, citing sources, reported that the plot could have been in the “aspirational stages.”

In repsonse to the perceived threat, the Obama administration has authorized five drone strikes in diferent provinces in Yemen in less than two weeks.

From The Beast:

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 U.S. intelligence community to listen in on the al Qaeda board meetings.

Al Qaeda analyst J.M. Berger is blown away that the terrorist organization would assume that they could arrange a conference call that would not be intercepted by the U.S.

I'm flabbergasted that these guys thought they could do a conference call like this without it being intercepted.

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) August 7, 2013

And speaking of leaks, three U.S. intelligence officials told the Beast that an earlier communication between Zawahiri and AQAP leader Nasir Wuhayshi delivered through a courier was picked up last month.

Check out the report at the Beast »

Another look at those temporary closures: