Major Terror Attack/s

"We are going to keep evaluating information as it comes in, keep analyzing the various intelligence that we're getting in, in regards to this stream. Overall, what we are doing is taking precautionary steps out of an abundance of caution to protect our people and our facilities and visitors to those facilities overseas."
Marie Harf, spokeswoman, U.S. State Department

The Washington Post

A conversation between the head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan who ordered the head of al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate to carry out an attack. An attack; on whom, unknown, where unknown. But the conversation was intercepted between Ayman al-Zawahri, once Osama bin Laden's second in command, and now having assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda giving inconcise orders to Nasser al-Wuhayshi, head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen was where Osama bin Laden had refuge originally; the country was in fact the homeland of the bin Laden tribe. The claims of an intercept seem peculiar. Intelligence had it that there was caution born of experience among al-Qaeda operatives knowing that the eyes and ears of the West were trained on their communications. Which was why Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound was known not to use a cellphone or the Internet to communicate with his faithful.

He used a personal messenger as his preferred tool of communication to ensure that whatever he directed remained unknown to those snooping to discover what he was planning, and to ensure there were no accidental betrayals. So how is it that the highest-ranking al-Qaeda leadership are careless enough to use these types of communication techniques easily accessed/intercepted by alert intelligence agents seeking insider information?

Yet the public is informed through the most elite echelons of American intelligence that this is precisely what occurred. "This was significant because it was the big guys talking, and talking about very specific timing for an attack or attacks", claimed one U.S. official. The only solid data that appeared to come out of the intercept was that Sunday was mentioned as the day the attack or attacks would occur. Did the increased international vigilance, the closing of foreign embassies and consulates deter those attacks?

Designed to take place no one knows for certain, although the Government of Yemen believed it would be the target, and the United States felt it was meant to be targeted, while warning the rest of the West that they would not be immune to such targeting. As for the closing of some 19 diplomatic missions throughout the Middle East and North Africa by the United States, they were characterized as merely 'precautionary measures'.

"...merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees and visitors to our facilities." One Western diplomat who was in possession of scuttlebutt stressed the reports he was made privy to were unconfirmed, that in fact little information existed to suggest an assault was actually impending. Intelligence analysts claimed no new information on the threats.

"The assumption is that it's probably most likely to happen in the Middle East", claimed Rep. Peter T. King on the ABC News program This Week. "But there's no guarantee of that at all. It could basically be in Europe, it could be in the United States, it could be a series of combined attacks." And it could be the consequences of someone's fertile imagination, conceivably, to draw attention away from other inconveniences.

If a threat did indeed emanate from the source claimed, in any event, much could claim to have been achieved, despite no actual attack having been mounted in retaliation to the deaths occasioned in Yemen from American drone assaults. The West was put on notice, was constrained to take action, high anxiety resulted, and much true inconvenience in committing the return of non-essential embassy staffers to their home countries.

And Yemeni authorities were given the opportunity to state the case for their intelligence. Essentially, retaliation for the killing of Saeed al-Shihri, six years at Guantanamo Bay, finally released to become the number two al-Qaeda leader in Yemen.