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EXCLUSIVE: CIA Suicide Bomber Photo First photo of Humam al-Balawi, Double Agent Who Killed Seven CIA Operatives in Afghanistan [Pic in URL] By BRIAN ROSS and NASSER ATTA Jan. 6, 2010 ABC News has obtained an exclusive photo of suicide bomber Humam Muhammed al-Balawi, the Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler in Afghanistan on December 30. An exclusive photo obtained by ABC News shows Humam Khalil Muhammed al Balawi, identified as suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. agents and his handler at Forward Operating Base Chapman near Khost city, Afghanistan, on Dec. 30, 2009....

WASHINGTON: As names of the seven CIA operatives who died in the Taliban suicide bombing in Afghanistan last week trickle out into public domain espite official silence in Washington, there is another casualty from the episode - trust, never a reliable commodity in the first place in the espionage business. Intelligence circles are now slowly piecing together what really happened in Forward Operating Base Chapman near the Pakistan border last Wednesday when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated a suicide vest killing eight people, including an Afghan security director and an American perimeter security guard who had escorted him inside –...

WASHINGTON -- The suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and one Jordanian intelligence officer was likely a Jordanian doctor affiliated with al Qaeda, according to current and former U.S. officials and an Afghan security official. The bomber was recruited as an informant and brought to the CIA's base in Khost Province by a Jordanian intelligence official, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, who was working with the CIA, according to an Afghan security official. The blast on Dec. 30 killed four CIA officers, three CIA contractors and Mr. bin Zeid, officials said. Six CIA employees were wounded in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan last week was a Jordan-born terrorist double agent who claimed to have information targeting Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday. The bombing killed seven CIA employees_ four officers and three contracted security guards_ and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

After the single most deadly day for the CIA since eight officers were killed in Beirut in 1983, an official tells the Daily Mail he's tired of the double standard: One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,’ said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.’ But CIA bosses claim they were unfairly blamed at a time...

Spy chiefs turn on President Obama after seven CIA agents are slaughtered in Afghanistan By David Gardner excerpt: Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA. The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for...

Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA. The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life’. Yet the previous day he had blasted ‘systemic failures’...

Here is a video report on the suicide bomber attack that killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan earlier this week. The report reveals that the bomber was a well-known informant for the CIA in Afghanistan who apparently was a double-agent. The Taliban in Pakistan claim he was a double-agent for them. He reportedly came from the Pakistan side of the border. He was driven onto the base in Afghanistan and was reportedly not subjected to a search because he was known to people there. He blew himself up in the gymnasium of the base, killing the agents. The CIA is...

KABUL -- A senior commander connected to the Afghan Taliban and involved with the attack against the CIA that left eight people dead said Saturday that the bombing was retaliation for U.S. drone strikes in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. "We attacked this base because the team there was organizing drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area," the commander said, referring to the area around Khost, the city where the U.S. facility was attacked. The commander, a prominent member of the Afghan insurgency, spoke on the condition of anonymity. The suicide attack, which dealt the biggest loss to the agency...

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,...

WASHINGTON -- The attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency officers on a U.S. base in Afghanistan appears to stem from a strategy of calculated risk in running the spy agency's informant network, posing a sharp challenge as operations ramp up for the Obama troop surge. U.S. intelligence and military officials said Friday that Wednesday's attacker had been recruited as a possible informant and brought onto Forward Operating Base Chapman, passing through at least one checkpoint. He detonated his charge shortly before being searched, blowing himself up, killing seven and wounding six. It was a "high-level asset meeting gone bad,"...

While the painstaking process of unearthing the "systematic failures" of intelligence on the "underwear bomber" continues, Obama again performs on script. Just as he's done with virtually every past crises - and always while armed with only the bare essentials of information - the now infamous POTUS finger of blame moves away from anyone remotely connected with Obama, his decisions or performance of his appointees, and falls once again on his favorite scapegoat, the CIA. And the CIA spy chiefs are none to happy about the accusations. It seemed especially harsh when, in an apparent moment of political expedience, Obama...

KABUL--The suicide bomber who killed eight Americans, including seven CIA officers, this week might have been able to get through multiple layers of security at the U.S. compound aided by an Afghan informant with the agency, a Western official said Friday. If this is true, it suggests insurgents had turned the tables on the CIA and been able to place their own agents close to the facility the CIA used to cultivate informants.On Wednesday, CIA officials had invited the attacker onto the base with the hopes of recruiting him as an informant. They used an Afghan intermediary to arrange the...

The bombing, just as President Barack Obama's surge is gathering pace, represented the biggest loss of life suffered by the US intelligence agency since an attack in Beirut in 1983. The CIA said on Thursday a further six agents had been injured in the attack. Claiming credit for the attack, a Taliban spokesman said the bomber was "an Afghan national army officer wearing a suicide vest".

Bombing in Afghanistan Devastates Critical Hub for CIA Activities By SIOBHAN GORMAN WASHINGTON—Wednesday's attack on a U.S. compound in Afghanistan devastated what has been a hub of counterterrorism and intelligence operations for the spy agency. Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers and contractors were killed and six more wounded in the suicide bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Thursday, the second-largest single-day loss for the spy agency in its history. Among the casualties was the agency's base chief, former intelligence officials said. There had been only four publicly acknowledged CIA fatalities in Afghanistan prior to...

The dead include a mother of three who was the head of the CIA's base in Khost Province, near Pakistan, the Associated Press news agency reports. The attack was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.