A man named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was a Jordanian who was supposed to infiltrate al-Qaeda for the CIA while in Afghanistan. He was supposed to be someone the CIA both trusted and relied upon. It turns out that he was a double-agent, working for al-Qaeda, whose final mission was a suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents. al-Balawi was also from the same town as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
MSNBC reported:
Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National Army.The mission of al-Balawi was to get information on Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's #2 man behind bin Laden. This video clip from MSNBC's Morning Joe is a MUST SEE. Richard Engle provides the information about the attack and explains that the seven CIA agents were not just agents but high value targets for al-Qaeda. These were very high-ranking officials inside the CIA, one of whom had been tracking bin Laden for many years and had a personal history doing so that cannot be simply transferred to others.
According to Western intelligence officials, the perpetrator was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, an al-Qaida sympathizer from the town of Zarqa, which is also the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant Islamist responsible for several devastating attacks in Iraq.
Al-Balawi was arrested by Jordanian intelligence more than a year ago. However, the Jordanians believed that al-Balawi had been successfully reformed and brought over to the American and Jordanian side, setting him up as an agent and sending him off to Afghanistan and Pakistan to infiltrate al-Qaida.
In addition, al-Balawi's intelligence handler was also killed in this attack. Having even more far-reaching implications is that Jordanian intelligence officer Sharif Ali bin Zeid accompanied al-Balawi to Camp Chapman and was one of the victims along with the seven CIA agents / officers. Complicating things further is that bin Zeid was related to the Abdullah royal family in Jordan.
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