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Exclusive: CIA Attacker Driven in From Pakistan
ABC News ^ | Jan. 2, 2010 | ALEEM AGHA and NICK SCHIFRIN

Posted on 01/02/2010 5:33:23 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY

The suicide bomber who killed at least six Central Intelligence Agency officers in a base along the Afghan-Pakistan border on Wednesday was a regular CIA informant who had visited the same base multiple times in the past, according to someone close to the base's security director.

The informant was a Pakistani and a member of the Wazir tribe from the Pakistani tribal area North Waziristan, according to the same source. The base security director, an Afghan named Arghawan, would pick up the informant at the Ghulam Khan border crossing and drive him about two hours into Forward Operating Base Chapman, from where the CIA operates.

Because he was with Arghawan, the informant was not searched, the source says. Arghawan also died in the attack.

The story seems to corroborate a claim by the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border that they had turned a CIA asset into a double agent and sent him to kill the officers in the base, located in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.

The infiltration into the heart of the CIA's operation in eastern Afghanistan deals a strong blow to the agency's ability to fight Taliban and al Qaeda, former intelligence officials say, and will make the agency reconsider how it recruits Pakistani and Afghan informants.

The officers who were killed in the attack were at the heart of the United States' effort against senior members of al Qaeda and the Taliban, former intelligence officials say. They collected intelligence on the militant commanders living on both sides of the border and helped run paramilitary campaigns that tired to kill those commanders, including the drone program that has killed a dozen senior al Qaeda with missiles fired from unpiloted aircraft.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; alqaeda; ciaofficers; fobchapman; nationalsecurityfail; pakistan; taliban

1 posted on 01/02/2010 5:33:24 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Didn’t Obozo de Klown say he would invade PockyStan if need be to go after Terrorists?

Waiting for the ZERO to do anything to protect the USA is going to get many more Americans killed.

FUBO!!


2 posted on 01/02/2010 5:44:53 PM PST by GRRRRR (He'll NEVER be my President, FUBO!)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Who burned the agent?

The report indicates that he was “turned” by the Taliban. Before they turned him they had to identify him. Maybe they used tradecraft, maybe a mole on our side burned him. I wouldn’t put it past someone on Senator Feinstein’s staff to have leaked the information to a “reporter” or some other false flag operator. The Congress micromanages intelligence and they and their staffs leak like sieves.

Who in their right mind would trust the United States under these circumstances?

Was he acting under compunction, which being turned implies? (Agents rarely turn for ideological reasons and someone acting out of greed won’t commit suicide.) What form could that compunction have taken? Or was he a Taliban plant all along and himself the mole from the begining?


3 posted on 01/02/2010 5:45:28 PM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (The CRU needs adult supervision.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

A female reporter with ABC News was on WMAL this morning. She said this CIA operation was responsible for the deaths of at least 300 taliban and alqaeda due to their providing information for UAV missile strikes. These fallen CIA officers were exceptional heroes and served their country well. Such a tragic loss for their families and for each of us.


4 posted on 01/02/2010 5:49:49 PM PST by HokieMom (Pacepa : Can the U.S. afford a president who can't recognize anti-Americanism?)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

Remember Eikenberry thinks that the Taliban should be part of the Afgan Government.
There is the leak.


5 posted on 01/02/2010 5:53:34 PM PST by Marty62 (former Marty60)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

You ask good and important questions.


6 posted on 01/02/2010 6:00:19 PM PST by Bahbah (Only dead fish go with the flow)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

A sad business. My first reaction was that you simply cannot trust a Muslim double agent. But in this case, it looks like someone must have leaked his role to the Taliban.

It’s possible, of course, that he developed a guilty conscience and “got religion.” I imagine tribal loyalties would have warred with religious loyalties.

Although the US is involved, much of what is going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan is Muslim against Muslim, so the lines would be far from clear for someone trying to do the right thing.

But I suspect, as several have already said, that someone leaked to the enemy, and he was betrayed before he was turned.


7 posted on 01/02/2010 6:03:44 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero; All

I vote for he was a plant/mole from day one, not turned. Taliban have been very good at faking stuff. Remember the “journalists” that assassinated Massoud just before we launched our attack against the Taliban.


8 posted on 01/02/2010 6:07:56 PM PST by gleeaikin
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To: Marty62

First time I’ve seen someone look in the right direction.


9 posted on 01/02/2010 6:11:40 PM PST by piytar (Ammo is hard to find! Bought some lately? Please share where at www.ammo-finder.com)
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To: Marty62

BTW, to be clear, Eikenberry is honorable. But naïve. Again, IMHO.


10 posted on 01/02/2010 6:13:10 PM PST by piytar (Ammo is hard to find! Bought some lately? Please share where at www.ammo-finder.com)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

good questions — I was wondering immediately if he was a mole/double-agent all along?? That could be less likely if he really did provide a lot of good intel, but who knows now? Sometimes real intel is provided, even intel harmful to one’s own side, in order to get a chance at a much bigger prize? We don’t know anything (of course) about what actual targets he provided....maybe we were blowing up empty buildings, or Maybe he was having our Predator strikes take out rivals of the Taliban? Maybe that’s far-fetched, maybe not.....

or maybe the Taliban caught onto him and offered him a simple choice: either the Taliban slaughters his entire family of all generations, or he agrees to become a suicide/homicide bomber and Allah will reward him etc.


11 posted on 01/02/2010 6:14:32 PM PST by Enchante (Do we really send captured TERRORISTS off to Saudi-land and Yemen so they can be "REHABILITATED"?)
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To: gleeaikin
trivia

Masoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001, a few days before 9/11.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2001 : (AFGHANISTAN : ASSASSINATION OF NORTHERN ALLIANCE LEADER AHMAD SHAH MASSOUD [FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER OF AFGHANISTAN 1992-to-96 ]-- WITH HELP FROM FRENCH TERRORIST WILLIE BRIGITTE -- See LeT, SYDNEY CELL, VA JIHAD) ... Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by two men posing as documentary filmmakers two days before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.... [French terrorist Willie] Brigitte [was later linked] to the supply of two stolen Belgian passports that assassins Karim Touzani and Kacem Bakkali used to gain access to the northern Afghanistan stronghold of Massoud's northern Afghanistan stronghold... A TV camera believed to have contained the bomb is known to have been stolen from a French camera operator in Grenoble [France] on Christmas Eve 2000. Massoud's murder was a severe setback to moves to oust the fundamentalist Islamic regime that harboured al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. ------ "Deportee tie to assassination," By Peter Fray, Paris & Mark Forbes, Canberra, The Age [Australia] , October 29, 2003 ; This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/28/1067233172665.html

SEPTEMBER 9, 2001 : (BRIGITTE, PARIS CELL-- see LeT) A Frenchman under investigation in [2003 in ] Australia and France for possible terrorist activities was also suspected of links to the assassination of an Afghan leader, authorities said. Willie Virgile Brigitte, 35, is in custody in a Paris area jail where he is being held on suspicion of association with a terror group, French police and justice officials said. Investigations are under way in France and Australia into Brigitte's alleged links to the al-Qaeda terror network, French officials said today.
A judicial official said that Brigitte was also suspected of running false passports to the assassins of former anti-Taliban rebel leader in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massood. ----Terror suspect linked to Afghan assassination,AP via The Age ^ | October 28, 2003 | NA\

MAY 2002 : (UK : YASSIR EL SIRRI IS FREED AND THEN REARRESTED -- SEE MASSOUD ASSASSINATION, LANDMARK PLOT'S OMAR ABDURRAMAN {see LYNNE STEWART}) LONDON (AP) -- An Egyptian man [Yassir el-Sirri] accused of conspiring to assassinate an Afghan northern alliance leader was freed Thursday after a terrorist charge against him was dismissed -- but was immediately re-arrested on an extradition warrant from the United States. (Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...--- Egyptian accused of plotting to kill Afghan northern alliance leader freed, re-arrested New Jersey Online (AP) ^ | May 16, 2002 | JILL LAWLESS
*********
Updated information on this guy:
LONDON (AP) — An Egyptian activist accused by U.S. authorities of aiding a Muslim cleric with links to the al-Qaida terrorist network professed his innocence during a court hearing Friday. The United States is seeking to extradite Yassir el-Sirri, who lives in London, on charges of sending money to the Afghanistan-based family of Omar Abdel-Rahman, a Muslim cleric identified as the leader of an al-Qaida-linked terrorist organization known as the Islamic Group. ``I would like to make it known that I am innocent and what the United States government is doing is just fabricating a case against me. I am innocent,'' el-Sirri said through an interpreter.
El-Sirri, who is free on bail, was not asked to enter a formal plea during the hearing at Bow Street Magistrates Court.
Abdel-Rahman is serving a life sentence in the United States for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks in the 1990s. El-Sirri was one of four people charged in New York last month with helping Abdel-Rahman spread terrorist messages.
The U.S. extradition warrant alleges that el-Sirri, 39, sent money to Afghanistan in May 2001, ``knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that the money would or may be used for the purpose of terrorism within the jurisdiction of the government of the U.S.A.''
Lawyers for el-Sirri said that their client ran a London-based Islamic organization that regularly sent money to the families of Islamic prisoners. They argued the money sent to Afghanistan, which amounted only to a few hundred dollars, was part of his usual humanitarian work and was not terrorist funding.
El-Sirri was arrested in Britain in October [2001] and charged with conspiring to assassinate Afghan northern alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massood. Massood was mortally wounded in Afghanistan by two suicide bombers on Sept. 9. British prosecutors accused el-Sirri of using his organization, the Islamic Observation Center, to give fake journalistic credentials to two men who detonated a bomb hidden in their camera while they interviewed Massood. -------------- Egyptian Faxes Terror Aid Charge AP 3 posted on 06/02/2002 2:31:53 PM PDT by cgk

OCTOBER 8, 2002 : (ANTWERP : ARREST OF A MOROCCAN IN THE CASE OF THE ASSASSINATION OF AFGHAN NORTHERN ALLIANCE LEADER MASSOOD) BRUSSELS -- A Belgian court extended Tuesday the detention of a 35-year-old Moroccan accused in connection with the killing last year of the Afghan anti-Taleban commander Ahmad Shah Masood, officials said. The suspect, whose identity has not been officially revealed, was arrested on October 8 in Antwerp and has been charged with complicity in the September 2001 killing of the Afghan opposition leader, a spokesman as said.
The Brussels court extended his detention warrant by a month pending an investigation into an operation to provide false passports, AFP quoted prosecution spokesman Jos Colpin as saying.
Belgian press reports have named the suspect as Ahmed Ellattah, and said he has family ties with Mohamed Sliti, a Belgian national suspected of having helped arrange the trips by Masood's two killers to Afghanistan. According to the daily La Derniere Heure, Ellattah has denied any involvement in the plot, although he has admitted that he knew some of those implicated.
Masood, a charismatic fighter who led the Northern Alliance coalition fighting the Taleban regime, was killed by two suicide bombers posing as journalists. His assassination came just two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States, which sparked U.S. reprisals that led to the ousting of the Taleban late last year.---Belgium Keeps Suspect in Masood Killing Behind Bars Tehran Times ^ | October 16 2002 [IRAN]

12 posted on 01/02/2010 6:21:22 PM PST by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets
He wasn't necessarily burned. All of these people have families on both sides of the border and are susceptible to blackmail. The real fault lies with the handling agents. They brought this source onto the post without first frisking him. SOP always states to search and verify before putting the lives of other people at risk. Better for one agent and a translator to die then a whole group. They forgot the first rule “Trust No One”.
13 posted on 01/02/2010 6:25:27 PM PST by wbarmy (Hard core, extremist, and right-wing is a little too mild for my tastes.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

They probably discovered his identity, and used his family against him. He’s dead either way; he can be beheaded along with his family, or he can martyr himself and save his family.


14 posted on 01/02/2010 8:02:39 PM PST by marron
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To: piytar

The touchy feely Diplomates will get us all killed.


15 posted on 01/03/2010 7:25:27 AM PST by Marty62 (former Marty60)
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To: gleeaikin

I remember hearing and then reading about that hit on the Northern Alliance leader. Opened my eyes back then; big time.


16 posted on 01/03/2010 2:00:00 PM PST by Michael Barnes (Call me when the bullets start flying.)
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