By John Reed,  ForeignPolicy.com, Sept. 18, 2013

The mysterious "conference call" of al Qaeda leaders that led the United States to close its embassies around the Middle East in August was deciphered by a low-ranking enlisted man in the Air Force, who alerted his senior officers after finding clues about the ominous communication in the course of his regular duties.

"The warning that prompted that action [the embassy closures] came from the 70^th ISR Wing, and specifically from a senior airman," Lt. Gen. Robert Otto, the Air Force chief of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, said at the Air Force's annual conference in Washington.

The individual analyst being credited with the key discovery that alerted officials to a possible terrorist attack is a "cryptologic linguist" with the rank of senior airman who leads a team of electronic data analysts in one of the Air Force's premier signals intelligence units [.....]

The wing breaks into other countries' electronic communications networks to eavesdrop on whether they are adhering to treaties, steal information on their weapons, and scramble their command and control data.

That mission is consistent with story that U.S. intelligence agencies cracked some form of encrypted electronic communications that al-Qaeda leaders had previously thought safe to use.