Afghan CIA base's suicide bomber was double agent

[TonyGosling]

Suicide bomber who killed CIA agents was a Jordanian triple-agent who offered to help catch Al-Qaeda's No.2

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:46 PM on 05th January 2010

The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordanian triple-agent recruited to infiltrate al-Qaeda, it was revealed today.

Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from the town of Zarqa, Jordan, was named as the bomber by a former senior U.S. intelligence officer.

Zarqa is the hometown of infamous al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Balawi had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence a year earlier.

He was arrested by Jordanian intelligence and was persuaded to support U.S. and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaeda.
Enlarge

Jordanian royal guard carrying the coffin of Captain Ali bin Zeid, who was killed in Afghanistan alongside seven CIA operatives in a suicide bombing

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-Zawahiri, bin Laden's right-hand man.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees - four officers and three contracted security guards - and a Jordanian intelligence officer, named as Ali bin Zaid.

Al-Balawi was not searched for bombs when he got on to Camp Chapman, according to a current intelligence official.

He detonated the explosive shortly after his debriefing began. In addition to the eight dead, there were at least six wounded, according to the CIA.

The bodies of seven CIA employees arrived yesterday 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.

The Chapman forward operating base was located next to Khost airfield on the border with Pakistan

Al-Balawi was brought in for debriefing after he claimed to have information on the whereabouts of bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, above

Former CIA officers have said 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.

SITE said that al-Balawi used a pseudonym - identified as Khorsani - in the postings, describing how he rose through the ranks of online jihadist forums. He said he went to Afghanistan to fight, and he exhorted others to do violence.

'No words are more eloquent than those proven by acts, so that if that Muslim survives, he will be one who proves his words with acts. If he dies in the Cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah,' al-Balawi wrote

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.

Yacoub said the Jordanian intelligence officer, bin Zaid, was helping the CIA recruit agents to spy on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bin Zaid allegedly recruited the suicide bomber.

Jordan's state news agency Petra identified bin Zaid as an army officer on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan. It said he was killed Wednesday evening 'as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan.' It did not provide other details.

The Jordanian military released a brief statement acknowledging bin Zaid had been killed in Afghanistan, but it did not mention he was working with Jordanian intelligence or cooperating with the CIA.

The death of bin Zaid underscored the close relationship between the Jordanian intelligence service and the CIA in the U.S. global war on terrorism.

Jordan is known to have acted as a proxy jailer for the CIA in 2004, when Jordanian intelligence officers interrogated several al-Qaida militants who were flown in on rendition flights from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A key U.S. ally in the Mideast, Jordan also contributed valuable intelligence data to the United States, which helped track down the former Al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, in 2006. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in June that year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1240718/Suicide-bomb er-killed-CIA-agents-Jordanian-triple-agent-offered-help-catch-Al-Qaed as-No-2.html