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CIA BASE BOMBER WAS DOUBLE AGENT

ABOVE: Suicide bomber who struck at a CIA base in Afghanistan was a double agent

5th January 2010

The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordanian-born terrorist working as a double agent, sources said.

The man had been invited to the base because he claimed to have information targeting Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, a former senior US intelligence source and a foreign government official said.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees - four officers and three contracted security guards - and Jordanian intelligence officer Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former US intelligence official.

The ex-senior intelligence source 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 home town of the late 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 US 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, bin Laden's right-hand man.

Hajj Yacoub, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan, identified the bomber on Muslim militant websites 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 on to Camp Chapman, according to both former officials and a current intelligence official.

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