“The one thing we can talk about is the fact that there’s been an awful lot of chatter out there,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said the chatter is “very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

The United States has closed more than 20 embassies for the weekend, mostly in north Africa and the Middle East, in response to unspecified intelligence assessments about a mounting terrorist threat. Lawmakers offered their first glimpse of the seriousness of the threat in their public comments on Sunday…

“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,” said Chambliss.