I am genuinely disturbed by this leak of NSA capabilities
This may be the most damaging leak about NSA-type operations since ever.
I am disturbed this was published. If this was in the Snowden papers Greenwald would most likely NOT have published it. This is serious operational detail divulging stuff.
If one was actually concerned with National Security, rather than just seeking to minimize the influence of the left in intra-party Democratic politics, this one leak would make the entirety of the Snowden affair or the Manning affair trivial in comparison. (And this leaker should really be in prison. It's unthinkable that anyone who knew this would leak it. One can only hope it's a CIA disinformation op.)
Al Qaeda members included representatives or leaders from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and more obscure al Qaeda affiliates such as the Uzbekistan branch. Also on the call were representatives of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates such as al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The presence of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates operating in the Sinai was one reason the State Department closed the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, according to one U.S. intelligence official. “These guys already proved they could hit Eilat. It’s not out of the range of possibilities that they could hit us in Tel Aviv,” the official 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 U.S. intelligence community to listen in on the al Qaeda board meetings.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/07/al-qaeda-conference-call-intercepted-by-u-s-officials-sparked-alerts.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
The "government" is not a monolith. Agencies often work at cross-purposes. The more secretive they are, the more obscure or nefarious may be their reasons for leaking information.
If you have any information about the source of this leak, I'd be interested in reading it.
-app
What a PERFECT time for this to be "leaked." "We're not spying on you, we're spying on terrorists! See!! We need to spend billions on this stuff!!!" It's perfect PR and sells the program with a shiny red bow. Ma and Pa Jones will feel so much safer now and won't give a damn they they're being spied on too. Were there not predictions on DU that some terrorist "event" would be along shortly to make everyone shut the hell up about the Snowden revelations? I thought they might goad someone into blowing something up, but this little story does very nicely.
And they're making the surveillance state palatable because these all-powerful cave-dwellers will soon be coming to a small town near you. Spending trillions to bomb entire regions--they can intercept a phonecall but they can't trace the signal? Reds under every bed is now turbans in every nook and cranny. Just like the nebulous "terror alerts" of the shrub era, this is so damned convenient it smells.
Or I'm a wingnut as was illustrated upthread.
I just can't stop hating!
Is the first name always the same? Is it just a large tribe of them so that reporters get confused? Is our government confused about the name?
Odd that few reported article point out that Al Zawahiri has been killed many times by US.
Or maybe it's just you and I who noticed that. 
only one at that time. So excuses were made when the question arose.
Back during the Bush years, we killed Al Zarqawi I believe so many times I lost count. They never explained it. But when they decided to bump him off permanently, because people began to finally wonder if this guy had extraordinary powers of rising from the dead, and began looking into who he actually was, (Dan Rather dug up the info, a nobody, a petty thief as it turned out with no connections to Al Queda, used by Cheney as the 'Al Queda connection in Iraq who lost his leg and went there to have it amputated', no record of that either) see what happened to Rather later btw, they claimed they 'killed him' once again.
The problem was they had 'over-used' him and people remembered the 'no leg' Cheney story. He also had shown up in the video of the Berg beheading that ended the torture hearings, claimed by the media to be 'Al Zarqawi', problem was he had both legs in that video and appeared to be from Eastern Europe.
So, having been given these extraordinary powers of rising from the dead, appearing in questionable videos etc, people wanted to be sure he was dead, really dead this time. So people asked about the 'one leg' story, which the 'dead' Al Zarqawi should have had. The media dropped the story after that. And THIS time, he seems to have died, or was no longer worth using.
I still want to know about the Cheney 'one legged man' story though.
As for Al Zawahiri, I imagine he too may rise from the dead, unless we make too much of a fuss over his apparent rising from the dead powers also.
Put it this way, one of our Generals finally admitted in an 'off-the-record' comment that Al Zarqawi WAS propaganda. I believe it was Kimmel.
Lol, so, I notice when someone appears to be like Christ and wonder about it. But that's me. So, no, to your question, it isn't just you and me. It was a lot of people. We are not as stupid as they think we are. 
Your details brought back some of my memories of why I was so skeptical...and so well written that I was 
so hard reading it!
Remember the "Fat Osama" and the "Thin Osama"? We used to laugh about it around here on DU at one time. When the video of Osama appeared after PBO took him out I watched it several times. The Osama watching TV in that video to me was Much shorter and stouter than the other Osamas from the Bush years videos. The distinctive long face and body build of the Original Osama (and early photos of him when he was young) couldn't (imho) have aged into a round "troll under the bridge" type of character we saw squatted on the floor. And, that's why I don't believe that dramatic "Buried at Sea" story that we were fed. Who knows...but, add the "one-legged, two legged" Al Zawahiri who is killed again and again into that mix....and well... inquiring minds sort of get a bit skeptical.
dontcha' think? I wonder if they wear business suits and ties for the occasion. Was it a SKYPE or just the standard Conference Call to be more discreet. Sounds like they have them pretty regularly from the article. Only this time they discussed their proposed terror attacks in more detail, conveniently giving a time frame, which caused US to close embassies and put out the "Terror Alert."
"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. "
TERRA!TERRA!TERRA! 
