Posted on 03/25/2010 4:04:13 AM PDT by tobyhill
CIA officers in Afghanistan were so eager to meet the spy they believed would help them crack al-Qaida's leadership they planned a birthday celebration for his visit in December, current and former U.S. officials said.
A birthday cake was waiting.
But before they could even begin to question their golden source, he detonated a powerful bomb, killing himself and seven CIA employees in one of the deadliest attacks in the agency's history.
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old doctor who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence officials, was really a double agent.
The account of the planned birthday gathering is the latest evidence that CIA officials at the Afghan base trusted the Jordanian and wanted to build rapport with him. It was confirmed by current and former officials briefed on the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
The bombing not only weakened U.S. intelligence operations, it touched off a sometimes contentious debate within the close-knit intelligence community about whether such emotions led the CIA to be too lax with its security.
CIA Director Leon Panetta has scoffed at suggestions that security lapses were to blame for the attack. But it remains unclear why there was such a large contingent around al-Balawi when the bomb erupted.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
And our own throats.
LLS
I thought Muslims didn’t even celebrate birthdays.
As I recall, Atta discussed the hits of 9-11 with one of Osama's henchman. He described two targets....
The first was two sticks (The Towers). The Second was a Cake with a stick hanging down"....obviously, the Capitol Building with the Capital Mall leading to it.
FOOD was used for other Alqueda phone discussions.
Let's be real...They probably figured out which CIA member was the mole...and they ain't gonna admit it or tell us.
The sticks and the cake with stick down referred to date of the planned attack: “11-9”(most of the world uses dd/mm/yy format for dates) or “9-11”. Also remember, there were three planes hijacked.
Only educated idiots would do something like this.
There were 4 planes hijacked, are you forgetting one crashed into a field, one smashed into the Pentagon and the other two hit the twin towers. That adds up to four according to the math I was taught as a child.
Apparently, you’re not using your ‘world’ math.
If you go way back in my comments...years back, I noted that there was a dual meaning.
Had the Capitol been hit....and a second plane went in...the entire complex along the capitol mall would have been destroyed.
It had a file in it.
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