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-Qaeda, a former senior US intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday.
The bombing killed seven CIA employees — four officers and three contracted security guards — and Jordanian intelligence officer Ali bin Zaid, according to another former US intelligence official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
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-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
He was arrested in late 2007 by Jordanian intelligence and was thought to have been persuaded to support US and Jordanian efforts against Al-Qaeda. 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.
Hajj Yacoub, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taleban in Pakistan, identified the bomber on websites as Hammam Khalil Mohammed, also known as Abu-Dujana Al-Khurasani.
Al-Balawi ran a blog, http://abudujanakharasani.maktoobblog.com/, on which he posted calls for jihad and martyrdom that the Jordanian authorities presumably regarded as cover for the role of double agent. The blog was still available on Monday but was inaccessible on Tuesday.
“He spent months traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan and fed the Americans the information that the Mujahedeen wanted them to receive,” the Ana Muslim website said. “Every time that the reports which he gave proved accurate, their confidence in Abu Dujana rose.”
Al-Balawi was not searched as he went in for a debriefing because a CIA agent boasted: “He is our man, so there is no need,” the website claimed. The bomber then pretended to detail plans for a mooted operation on a piece of paper and asked the intelligence agents to gather round to look before blowing himself up, the website said. In addition to the eight dead, there were at least six wounded, according to the CIA.
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.
A Jordanian government official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, said the Jordanian government had not verified whether the bomber was Jordanian.
The Taleban’s Yacoub said the Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, was helping the CIA recruit agents to spy on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Ali bin Zaid allegedly recruited the suicide bomber.
Jordan’s state news agency Petra identified Ali 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.”
