[UPDATE BELOW] Unidentified sources tell CBS News that "U.S. intelligence has alerted joint terrorism task forces that al Qaeda could be planning attacks in three states for Monday." The states identified by the sources as potential targets are New York, Texas, and Virginia, but CBS has nothing more specific than that at this time.

The sources stress the intelligence is still being assessed and its credibility hasn’t been confirmed, but counterterrorism officials were alerted to the threat out of abundance of caution. A senior FBI official told CBS News, ““The counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States. The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety.”

Chatter and intelligence about potential terrorist attacks typically increase before major events and holidays. (We've reached to the NYPD for comment and will update if they issue a statement.) It may or may not be worth noting that John Miller, the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counter-terrorism, was a senior correspondent for CBS News for many years, and often grants interviews to the network.

Miller is not named in this thinly-sourced CBS report, which the network is reporting exclusively. As of 8:30 a.m., the only source even vaguely identified by CBS is a "senior FBI official."

Yesterday, the Daily Beast's Wayne Barrett reported that FBI director James Comey's controversial letter to Congress about the renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails may have resulted from pro-Trump FBI investigators threatening to leak details about the investigation if Comey did not announce it. "The FBI hierarchy and line staff has a Republican bent—it’s a white, male, usually Catholic, and conservative culture," Barrett writes, concluding that there is a "battalion" within the FBI "doing GOP work, even on the eve of a presidential election."

The Guardian also reported yesterday that the FBI is so anti-Clinton that one agent described the bureau as "Trumpland."

This will always be remembered as the presidential election in which the KKK, the KGB and the FBI all supported the same candidate. — Victor Laszlo (@Impolitics) November 2, 2016

In September, Vox asked political scientists whether a terrorist attack would be beneficial for Trump or Clinton. "It depends on the details, and on how these things are spun," said Michael Koch, a political scientist at Texas A&M University. "But especially if you could spin it as a Democratic failure, or link it to failures of the Obama administration, it might advantage Trump."

Jennifer Merolla, a political scientist at UC Riverside who studies how terrorism impacts politics, told Vox that "on average, our findings suggest Trump may be advantaged," but Clinton's foreign policy experience give her a better advantage than other Democrats.

Update 10:00 a.m.: The NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Stephen Davis has just issued this statement, which is similar to what the unnamed FBI official told CBS:

We are aware of the information. We have been working with the FBI through the Joint Terrorism Task Force and our Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureaus. In every case, we take any intelligence reports regarding New York City seriously. I would point out that the credibility of those reports is still being assessed and the information lacks specificity. Our security remains a shared responsibility. We continue to encourage anyone with any information that could be relevant to the safety of our city to contact law enforcement.

And a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio tweeted: