(CNN) -- An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen "caretaker" leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group's inner workings. 
 
 Al Qaeda's interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. He was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organization that used to be aligned with al Qaeda, but in recent years renounced al Qaeda's ideology. 
 
 Benotman told CNN that based on his personal communications with militants and discussions on jihadist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, had been chosen interim chief of al Qaeda because the global jihadist community had grown restive in recent days about the lack of a formal announcement of a successor to bin Laden. 
 
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 According to Benotman, this was not a decision of the formal shura council of al Qaeda, because it is currently impossible to gather them in one place, but was rather the decision of six to eight leaders of al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Al-Adel was already one of the top leaders of the group. 
 
 However, Benotman said, the choice of an Egyptian may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, who believe bin Laden's successor should come from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that is holy to all Muslims. Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi family. 
 
 The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Benotman, who has long been a reliable source of information about al Qaeda, said the temporary appointment of al-Adel may be a way for the leadership to gauge reaction to the selection of someone from beyond the Arabian Peninsula as the group's leader. 
 
 Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001 he fled to Iran. According to senior Saudi counterterrorism officials, from there al-Adel authorized al Qaeda's branch in Saudi Arabia to begin a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom that began in Riyadh in May 2003, a campaign that killed scores. 
 
 Some reports in the past year have suggested that al-Adel had left Iran for Pakistan. 
 
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 One of the key issues that al-Adel has to reckon with now is the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that was recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was shot on May 2. That information is likely to prove damaging to al Qaeda operations. 
 
 The selection of an interim leader allows al Qaeda to begin the process of collecting allegiance, or baya, from al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the North Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. 
 
 Baya was a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden rather than to the organization itself, in the same way that Nazi Party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whomever the new leader of al Qaeda is going to be, which is likely to be al-Zawahiri, given his long role as bin Laden's deputy. 
 
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 However, there is scant evidence that al-Zawahiri has the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that was accorded to bin Laden by members of al Qaeda. 
 
 Now that bin Laden is dead there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amir al-Muminin, "commander of the faithful," a rarely invoked religious title that dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed. 
 
 Mullah Omar could now take the position that the new leader of al Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to Omar as commander of the faithful. 
 
 Such a move would satisfy a key condition for peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments: that the Taliban reject al Qaeda, something that they have so far not done. 
 
 Al-Adel has been involved in militant activities since the late 1980s, according to an interview with him published in spring 2005 in the Arabic-language London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi. 
 
 In the article, written by Fuad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist and writer, al-Adel recalled that he was detained for militant activities in Egypt on May 6, 1987. 
 
 Al Qaeda's most-wanted leaders 
 
 
 
 "The case pertained to the assassination attempt against ex-Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan Abu-Basha. ... I was then a colonel in the Egyptian Special Forces," he said. 
 
 Al-Adel also has been involved for years in anti-American activities, other sources indicate. 
 
 Mohamed Odeh, one of the bombers of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in August 1998, told FBI interrogators that in 1993 he was ordered by al-Adel to go to Somalia to link up with local tribes and train them to fight and attack U.S. forces who were then serving there in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis. 
 
 And a British-Ugandan, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, recalled in a memoir that Adel instructed him and other recruits to fight U.S. forces around Kabul or in the southern city of Kandahar during the American invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 
 
 In the interview published in Al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Adel also explained al Qaeda's motivations for the 9/11 attack: "Our main objective, therefore, was to deal a strike to the head of the snake at home to smash its arrogance." 
 
 After the fall of the Taliban, Adel recalled that he and other members of al-Qaeda found refuge in Iran: "We began to converge on Iran one after the other," he said. "...We began to rent apartments for the fraternal brothers and some of their families. The fraternal brothers of the group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar" -- an Afghan militant then living in exile in Iran who is now a leader of the insurgency in Afghanistan -- "offered us satisfactory help in this field. They provided us with apartments and some farms that they owned." 
 
 But Al-Adel said that the Iranians subsequently arrested a large number of these "brothers." ||||| By Paul Cruickshank 
 
 CNN Terrorism Analyst 
 
 There may be a link between what sources tell CNN is evidence of final-stage planning for an attack against U.S and Western interests by al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and the reported recent appointment of the affiliate's leader as the new general manager of the global al Qaeda network. 
 
 Seth Jones, a senior analyst at the Rand Corporation, told CNN's Barbara Starr on Friday that there are indications that Nasir al Wuhayshi, the Yemeni leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had recently been appointed into the role by al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri. 
 
 The appointment would effectively thrust Wuhayshi, a Yemeni national, into the No. 2 position in the global al Qaeda terrorist network, a position previously held by the Libyan Abu Yahya al Libi before his death in a drone strike in Pakistan in June 2012. 
 
 It would also provide a broader foundation to al Qaeda's top leadership at a time when the center of gravity of the group has shifted from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to the Arab world. And it would potentially allow the group to retap fund-raising opportunities for the group in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries where Wuhayshi is more popular than Zawahiri, al Qaeda's less charismatic and sometimes divisive Egyptian leader. 
 
 Wuhayshi's appointment would almost certainly have required back-and-forth communication between the AQAP and al Qaeda Central. Given al Qaeda's past track record, that would most likely have involved couriers traveling back and forth between Yemen and Pakistan, where Zawahiri is presumed to be hiding. 
 
 This would have given Wuhayshi plenty of opportunity to inform Zawahiri of any plan in the works to hit American targets in the region. This possible foreknowledge in turn may explain Zawahiri's impassioned plea in a message posted on jihadist websites earlier this week for followers to hit American targets in the Middle East and beyond. 
 
 A high-profile attack orchestrated by Wuhayshi would cement the Yemeni's new position in the al Qaeda hierarchy. 
 
 "What I'm told by sources is - take all this together: you have got the naming of the chief from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, you have got the video [from Zawahiri], plus you have got the intelligence, all of this comes together in the last couple of weeks that leads them to take this extraordinary step of closing 21 embassies," CNN National Security Analyst Fran Townsend said on CNN's "AC360" on Friday. 
 
 A U.S. global travel alert remained in place Saturday amid fears that al Qaeda may launch attacks in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond in coming weeks. 
 
 The threat prompted the United States to announce that nearly two dozen embassies and consulates will be closed on Sunday, including in Yemen, which was a focus of concern. 
 
 The Next bin Laden? 
 
 Nasir al Wuhaysi who is known by his fighters as "Abu Basir," has a long pedigree in the global jihadist movement despite only being 36 years old. He is seen within jihadist circles as somebody with the credibility and charisma to one day fill Osama bin Laden's shoes as al Qaeda's paramount leader. 
 
 Wuhayshi was bin Laden's private secretary during the time al Qaeda was based in Taliban-run Afghanistan and, according to former al Qaeda insiders, he rarely left his side. After the U.S. military offensive to topple the Taliban, Wuhayshi fled to Iran, where he was arrested and eventually extradited to Yemen in 2003. 
 
 He was subsequently imprisoned in a high security jail in Sana'a with several other al Qaeda operatives who had been arrested in a crackdown on the group in Yemen after 9/11. But in February 2006, Wuhayshi and several other al Qaeda operatives escaped from the prison by digging a tunnel. Over the next several years Wuhayshi and the other escapees rebuilt al Qaeda's operations in the country and began launching attacks on Yemeni security services and foreign tourists. 
 
 In September 2008, Wuhayshi orchestrated a sophisticated multi-phase attack on the U.S. embassy in Sana'a involving gunmen with rocket propelled grenades and suicide bombers in cars packed with explosive. Although the attackers failed to breach the embassy perimeter, six Yemeni guards and four civilians were killed in the attack. 
 
 The following summer, Wuhayshi authorized an attempt to kill Saudi Arabia's then head of counter-terrorism, Mohammed bin Nayef. The plan was engineered by AQAP's ingenious chief bomb-maker Ibrahim al Asiri, who planted a bomb inside the rectum of his own brother. The operative gained an audience with the Saudi prince by pretending to defect and duly set off the bomb. But Nayef survived the attack. 
 
 Although nearly all AQAP's attacks have been directed against targets in Yemen, Wuhayshi made clear he supported bin Laden's campaign of attacks against the United States. 
 
 In late 2009, he green-lighted a plan by al Asiri and the American terrorist cleric Anwar al Awlaki to destroy a U.S. bound plane. On Christmas Day 2009, the Nigerian militant they recruited into the plot - Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - came close to blowing up an airliner coming into Detroit with an explosive device hidden in his underwear. 
 
 Bin Laden, determined to once again strike the United States, signaled his approval in correspondence sent to Wuhayshi. In August 2010, the Saudi sent a message from Abbottabad praising Wuhayshi for his "qualified and capable" leadership of the group and urging him to remain in his position. 
 
 Two more thwarted plots against U.S bound aviation followed: an attempt to blow cargo planes coming into the United States with bombs hidden inside printer cartridges in October 2010 and a plot involving an even more sophisticated underwear device built by al Asiri, which was thwarted by a British-Saudi double agent in April 2012. 
 
 In September 2012, three Yemeni AQAP operatives took part in the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi several sources told CNN. It is not clear whether they were dispatched by Wuhayshi to take part in the attack or happened to be in the city and joined in. 
 
 Despite green-lighting plots against the United States homeland, Wuhayshi never made them the group's priority. He only seconded a small number of operatives - perhaps a dozen - to AQAP's external operations outfit run by al Asiri and Awlaki. 
 
 Wuhayshi wants Islamic rule in Yemen 
 
 Wuhayshi's overriding focus, according to a former group insider, has been toppling the government in Sana'a and creating an Islamic state in Yemen. 
 
 In 2011, Wuhayshi's group took advantage of political turmoil in Sana'a to capture large areas of Yemen's southern tribal areas. He enlisted the support of some tribal factions by renaming the group "Ansar al Shariah" and casting its mission as one of restoring Islamic rule to the country. 
 
 Letters discovered in the Abbottabad compound revealed bin Laden had initially argued against the push to capture territory in Yemen fearing, rightly as it turned out, the group would not be strong enough to hold onto it, but Wuhayshi proceeded anyway. Bin Laden's opposition eventually softened. 
 
 Wuhayshi himself set up his headquarters in the town of Jaar in Yemen's southern tribal areas. For 16 months, al Qaeda effectively governed the area, taking on responsibility for electricity, water and other utilities, but also inflicting brutal medieval justice on those it judged to have broken Islamic law. 
 
 Wuhayshi was the commander at the heart of it all and his rule over territory in the heart of the Arab world further enhanced his reputation in jihadist circles worldwide. 
 
 According to former group insiders - in much the same way as bin Laden - he was extremely popular with rank and file al Qaeda fighters. He projected the same softly-spoken humble air as his mentor. 
 
 In spring 2012, the Yemeni military launched a major offensive which eventually drove al Qaeda out of several towns of the tribal areas of Yemen. But most of the group's leadership, including Wuhayshi, fled into the countryside and regrouped. In recent months, the group has been responsible for a rising number of bombings against Yemeni security services. 
 
 Is a revenge factor at work? 
 
 This week's terror threat warning may signal Wuhayshi has decided to attach greater priority to hitting U.S. and Western interests, which would be a worrying scenario for U.S. counter-terrorism officials because of the group's still significant capabilities, access to resources and expertise. Al Qaeda affiliates throughout the Middle East also have a new recruiting tool because of rising anger among the group's supporters because of what they perceive to be a U.S.-backed military coup in Egypt. 
 
 Wuhayshi's appointment as al Qaeda's de facto No. 2 will increase the pressure on him to show results in targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East. 
 
 Letters discovered from Abbottabad indicated that his boss Zawahiri disagreed with bin Laden over the relative priority that should be given to attacking the U.S. homeland. 
 
 According to the Washington Post, the correspondence indicated the Egyptian believed launching attacks against the U.S. interests in the Middle East was a more effective way of removing U.S. support for secular regimes in the region. 
 
 Wuhayshi likely also has several other motivations for ordering a strike now on U.S. interests. 
 
 In recent months U.S. drone strikes have killed several senior AQAP, including Said al Shehri, Wuhayshi's deputy last winter, and the group has signaled it wants revenge. 
 
 A successful high-profile attack may also re-energize the group after the setbacks of losing control of territory in Yemen's tribal areas last year.
– Al-Qaeda has yet to name a successor to Osama bin Laden, but CNN reports that a "caretaker" leader is in place. He is identified as Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian who has been in the group's upper echelon for years. Even al-Qaeda has to worry about politics, apparently: Adel may simply be the equivalent of a test balloon to see how the group's rank-and-file reacts to the idea of someone from Egypt—as opposed to the Arabian Peninsula—taking charge. If it goes well, it could pave the way for bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, also an Egyptian, to take permanent control. In another al-Qaeda development, the Wall Street Journal reports that Pakistani authorities arrested a mid-level operative in Karachi. It's the first such arrest since the raid on bin Laden's compound soured US-Pakistan relations. It comes a day after John Kerry visited Islamabad and promised better cooperation between the two countries, though it's unclear whether US forces took part in the arrest.