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See Also: Afgan Attacker was CIA Informant The New York Daily News The Dec. 30 suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan was carried out by an al-Qaeda double agent from Jordan, NBC News reported Monday. Western intelligence officials said Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor and al-Qaeda sympathizer from the same Jordanian hometown of militant Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for the attack, not a member of the Afghan National Army as initially reported. The attack killed seven CIA agents. Jordanian officials arrested al-Balawi more than a year ago, but believed he had been reformed and set him up as a double agent to infiltrate al-Qaeda and meet Ayman al Zawahiri, the terror group’s number two. AP sources: Bomber at CIA base was a double agentBy Pamela Hess and Adam Goldman Associated Press Writers
January 5, 2010 WASHINGTON—The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan claimed to have information about Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, and was being recruited as a double agent to infiltrate al-Qaida, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday.
The bombing killed seven CIA employees -- four officers and three contracted security guards -- and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.
The former senior intelligence official and the foreign official said the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan, who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence. Zarqa is the hometown of slain Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. NBC News first reported the bomber's identity. He was arrested more than a year ago by Jordanian intelligence and was thought to have been persuaded to support U.S. and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaida, according to the NBC report. He was invited to Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA forward base in Khost province on the fractious Afghan-Pakistan frontier, because he was offering urgent information to track down Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man. The CIA declined to comment on the report. Hajj Yacoub, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan, identified the bomber on Muslim militant Web sites as Hammam Khalil Mohammed, also known as Abu-Dujana al-Khurasani. There was no independent confirmation of Yacoub's statement. Al-Balawi was not searched for bombs when he got onto Camp Chapman, according to both former officials and a current intelligence official. He detonated the explosive shortly after his debriefing began, according to one of the former intelligence officials. In addition to the eight dead, there were at least six wounded, according to the CIA. The bodies of seven CIA employees arrived Monday at Dover Air Force Base in a small private ceremony attended by CIA Director Leon Panetta, other agency and national security officials, and friends and family. The former senior intelligence official said one of the big unanswered questions is why so many people were present for the debriefing -- the interview of the source -- when the explosive was detonated. A half-dozen former CIA officers told The Associated Press that in most cases, only one or two agency officers would typically meet with a possible informant along with an interpreter. Such small meetings would normally be used to limit the danger and the possible exposure of the identities of both officers and informants. An online jihadist magazine in September 2009 posted an interview with al-Balawi, according to SITE Monitoring Service, a terrorist watch group that reads and translates messages on extremist forums. |
