A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror.In December 2009, a group of the CIA's top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden's top deputy. Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency's worst loss of life in decades.In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA's secret war against al-Qaeda, a war that pits robotic planes and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts from inside al-Qaeda's lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America's greatest double-agent in half a century-but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge.
Quotations in this book that are designated by quotation marks are the recollections of individuals who heard the words as they were spoken. Italics are used in cases in which a source could not recall the precise language or when a source relayed conversation or thoughts that were shared with him by a participant in the events described.
President Barack Obama
James L. Jones, national security adviser
John Brennan, chief counterterrorism adviser to the president
Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff
Michael V. Hayden, CIA director, May 2006 to February 2009
Leon Panetta, CIA director, February 2009 to June 2011
Stephen Kappes, CIA deputy director
Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence
Darren LaBonte, CIA case officer, Amman station, CIA station chief, Amman station (identity classified; name withheld)
Ali bin Zeid, captain, Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID), aka the Mukhabarat
Ali Burjak, aka Red Ali, Mukhabarat counterterrorism chief, bin Zeid’s boss
Humam Khalil al-Balawi, physician and blogger
Khalil al-Balawi, Humam’s father
Defne Bayrak, Humam’s wife
Jennifer Matthews, CIA base chief, Forward Operating Base Chapman (“Khost”)
Harold Brown Jr., CIA case officer, Khost
Scott Roberson, CIA security chief, Khost
Dane Paresi, security contractor, Xe Services LLC, aka Blackwater, Khost
Jeremy Wise, security contractor, Xe Services LLC, aka Blackwater, Khost
Arghawan, Afghan detail security chief, Khost (last name withheld), CIA deputy chief of station, Kabul station (identity classified; name withheld)
Elizabeth Hanson, targeter, Kabul station
Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda founder and leader
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s No. 2 commander, deputy to Osama bin Laden
Osama al-Kini (given name Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam), senior al-Qaeda commander for Pakistan
Abdullah Said al-Libi, an al-Qaeda operations chief, leader of al-Qaeda’s “Shadow Army” in Pakistan
Sheikh Saeed al-Masri (given name Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid), al-Qaeda’s No. 3 commander
Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistani Taliban alliance, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
Hakimullah Mehsud, deputy TTP leader, cousin to Baitullah Mehsud
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, al-Qaeda senior leader and Islamic scholar
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (given name Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh), Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, killed in U.S. missile strike in 2006
Abu Zubaida (given name Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein), first “high-value” terrorist operative captured by the CIA after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the first to be subjected to waterboarding
For ten days the CIA team waited for the mysterious Jordanian to show up. From gloomy mid-December through the miserable holidays the officers shivered under blankets, retold stale jokes, drank gallons of bad coffee, and sipped booze from Styrofoam cups. They counted distant mortar strikes, studied bomb damage reports, and listened for the thrum of Black Hawk helicopters ferrying wounded. And they waited.
Christmas morning arrived on a raw wind, and still they sat. They picked at gingerbread crumbs in the packages sent from home and stared at the ceramic Nativity figurines one of the officers had set up in lieu of a tree. Then it was December 30, the last dregs of the old year and the tenth day of the vigil, and finally came word that the Jordanian agent was on the move. He was heading west by car through the mountains of Pakistan’s jagged northwestern fringe, wearing tribal dress and dark sunglasses and skirting Taliban patrols along the treacherous highway leading to the Afghan frontier.
Until now no American officer had ever seen the man, this spectral informant called “Wolf,” whose real name was said to be known to fewer than a dozen people; this wily double agent who had penetrated al-Qaeda, sending back coded messages that lit up CIA headquarters like ball lightning. But at about 3:00 P.M. Afghanistan time, Humam Khalil al-Balawi would step out of the murk and onto the fortified concrete of the secret CIA base known as Khost.
The news of his pending arrival sent analysts scurrying to finalize preparations. Newly arrived base chief Jennifer Matthews, barely three months into her first Afghan posting, had fretted over the details for days, and now she dispatched her aides to check video equipment, fire off cables, and rehearse details of a debriefing that would stretch into the night.
