joining me now with much more is cnn national security analyst fred townson, barbara starr who broke the story. barbara, tell me what you discovered. >> well, piers, in talking to someone who has a very immediate understanding of what transpired, they told me that these messages, these intercepted al qaeda messages by the u.s. intelligence community contained essentially code words, which the intelligence community interpreted correctly, it appears, as being a coded message among al qaeda oftives for signaling a potentially imminent attack. it was those code words, piers, that sparked the warning to close some 22 embassies and consulates because the u.s. had direct -- direct sense, a direct knowledge that the code words pointed to imminent, an imminent attack. what they didn't have was a good understanding at the time of exactly where and when, therefore, they had to close all embassies in the areas of greatest concern and as we know in recent days, it's really focused on yemen and we've seen a number of cia drone attacks in yemen killing about two dozen suspected al qaeda oftives in

. >> fred townson let's talk about president assad because everyone is talking about the need for him to go for well over a year now. we're now at the point of military action and yet that red trick is being rained back. it's not regime change, it's a retaliating attack concentrated on the chemical weapons. this is a bit of a mess how you sell this to an already skeptical public. is this guy a bad guy or not, and if he is, why are we not trying to seek to change the regime? >> that's right, piers. i frankly don't understand why administration would signal that we're not looking to change the balance of power but seeking to address the issue of chemical weapons. look, the limited targeted strikes, the cruise missile strikes, in and of themselves, we can't expect to be much of a deturrent. let's remember, after the bombings, president clinton sent missiles into afghanistan and sudan and that did not detour bin laden or the taliban and we saw them launch the 9/11 strikes from afghanistan where the missiles had been. missiles in and of themselves, once an out isn't an effective strategy.

fred townson is working her sources now. homeland security external advisories boards and peter burgin and phillip mud. what do you make of this? >> in more than a decade since 9/11, we've come to understand the sorts of words, code words thaw use. you learn from them people you captured and surveillance and foreign intelligence services and we've gotten much better and we listen for that. you load surveillance systems to trigger the system to alert analysts when they capture those sorts of words. this is an indication we've matured in terms of intelligence capability to identify the threat and act on it. >> phil, you say picking up this intelligence is standard operating procedure but the information should have never been leaked to the public, correct? >> no, i think there is a difference between what we know and if there is cause for concern across middle east. a difference when you play a cat and mouse game against terrorist telling them how we know. it's legitimate to tell americans we have access to al qaeda officials

joining me now is paul and fred townson, a member of the dhs and cia external advisory boards and dana bash and jill. jill, what are you hearing about this world-wide alert, 21 posts close in 17 countries. how credible a threat is this? >> they believe that it definitely is credible. they are taking it seriously. in fact, they say the number of countries where the embassies and consulates are being temporary shut down could increase in the length of time in which they are shut down could increase, as well. now what they are saying is in light of benghazi, they out of an abundance of caution are taking these steps. it refers to routine things that happen at the embassy, giving passports, et cetera but say for americans, if there is an emergency, they can get in touch with the embassy. that is not a problem. but they are also, anderson, urging americans if they are traveling to that region to register if this program, step. you can find it on their website and you can get texts and e-mail messages realtime about the threat that's out there and anything happening, country specific. >> jil