Online forums provide key havens for terror plots

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In secretive chat rooms and on encrypted Internet message boards, al-Qaida fighters have been planning and coordinating attacks — including a threatened if vague plot that U.S. officials say closed 19 diplomatic posts across Africa and the Middle East for more than a week.

It’s highly unlikely that al-Qaida’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, or his chief lieutenant in Yemen, Nasser al-Wahishi, were personally part of the Internet chatter or, given the intense manhunt for both by U.S. spy agencies, that they ever go online or pick up the phone to discuss terror plots, experts say.

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