The intercept that led the State Department to announce it would close several embassies across the Middle East and Northern Africa last week was a conference call between al-Qaida leaders and their affiliates in the region, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday.
One U.S. intelligence officer told the Daily Beast that the conference call was “like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” referring to a group of cartoon villains.
Over 20 al-Qaida operatives were on the call discussing a pending attack with leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen, according to the Daily Beast’s sources.
“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 intelligence officer said.
