weeks that the u.s. intelligence community began to understand, come into possession if you will of an intercepted message among senior al qaeda operatives that indicated planning was under way, possibly the final stages of planning, we're told, for an attack either in yemen, middle east, or north africa. we've actually been asked by an obama administration official not to go into a lot of detail about all of this because it is so sensitive, so serious, it could put things at risk. intercepts are some of the most critical that the u.s. intelligence gathers. what are intercepts? it could be a cell phone conversation, website posting, chat room, a courier message. there's any number of ways that the u.s. would come to have knowledge about intercepted communications, but it looks like it was one of these events in the last two weeks that lead to this growing alarm and lead