Leaks alerted al Qaida leaders they were being monitored, U.S. officials claim | McClatchy:
At issue in the McClatchy report is the naming of the two al Qaida figures whose messages had been intercepted, Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of al Qaida, and Nasser al Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. McClatchy, citing Yemeni officials, said the intercepted communication caught Zawahiri ordering Wuhayshi to launch an unspecified attack.
Ever since that report, The Times article said, terrorists had stopped using “a major communications channel” that U.S. officials had been monitoring and that intelligence officials “have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaida’s leaders and operatives.”
Asher, in a statement, said that in the nearly two months since McClatchy had published its story, no U.S. agency has contacted the newspaper chain about the article or has asked any questions about its sources.