There’s also reporting that the Daily Beast report was meant to cover for other sources behind the alert - including a potential US asset in on the call.

Within hours of publication, however, a bevy of national security journalists began casting doubts on the leaked information contained within the Beast’s report. Two theories were quickly born. Adam Goldman of the Associated Press wondered if the leak was manufactured to protect human intelligence (that is, a leaker within al Qaeda), while Ken Delanian of the Los Angeles Times suggested that it was intended to glorify the NSA’s signals intelligence capabilities at a politically vulnerable moment. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, meanwhile, failed to see how the entire story — the leak, the method of intercept, and the contents of the call — added up.

It’s hard to believe that there was a conference call of any kind when that’s a method that al Qaeda has shunned for years. OBL was notoriously difficult to find because he relied on messenger couriers to deliver messages to others in the terror group. Why would they suddenly rely on a conference call that greatly increases the chances of any/all participants being shadowed by UAVs.

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And that may be exactly the reason that AQ held the “conference call” because they were hoping to catch the US off guard and communicate its plans quicker than they could by other means.

Frankly, I’m leaning towards this being a cover for a human intel asset within al Qaeda (not the first time we’ve apparently done this- which gave US security intel on a plane bomb plot).