Jordanian informant lured CIA operatives into suicide attack, officials say

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 4, 2010

The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a meeting with a promise of new information about al-Qaeda's top leadership, according to two former U.S. government officials briefed on the incident.

The informant had been working undercover in eastern Afghanistan for weeks, and had already provided U.S. spies with what one official described as "actionable intelligence" when he set the trap, the sources said.

In addition to the seven operatives, the bomb blast at a CIA base in Khost province killed a Jordanian intelligence official who had been assigned to work with the informant, the officials said.

The alleged bomber, identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was picked up in a vehicle a distance from the CIA base and apparently was not thoroughly searched before being brought into the compound, said one of the former officials, a veteran counterterrorism officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the incident remains under investigation.

(More here.)