The Triple Agent

by Joby Warrick

  The Triple Agent

  Joby Warrick

  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.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  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.

  LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  The White House

  President Barack Obama

  James L. Jones, national security adviser

  John Brennan, chief counterterrorism adviser to the president

  Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff

  Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  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

  Amman, Jordan

  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

  In Afghanistan

  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

  Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan

  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

  MAPS

  PROLOGUE

  Khost, Afghanistan—December 30, 2009

  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.

  She watched them work, nervous but confident, her short brown hair pulled to the side in a businesslike part. At forty-five, Matthews was a veteran of the agency’s counterterrorism wars, and she understood al-Qaeda and its cast of fanatical death worshippers better than perhaps anyone in the CIA—better, in fact, than she knew the PTA at her kids’ school back home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Hard-nosed and serious, Matthews was one of the agency’s rising stars, beloved by upper management. She had leaped at the chance to go to Khost in spite of the quizzical looks from close friends who thought she was crazy to leave her family and comfortable suburban life for such a risky assignment. True, she would have much to learn; she had never served in a war zone, or run a surveillance operation, or managed a routine informant case, let alone one as complex as the Jordanian agent. But Matthews was smart and resourceful, and she would have plenty of help from top CIA managers, who were following developments closely from the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Their advice so far: Treat Balawi like a distinguished guest.

  Matthews signed off on a security plan for the visit, though not without carping from some of the Special Forces veterans in her security detail. Her primary concern was not so much for the
agent’s physical safety—the men with the guns would see to that—but rather for preserving his secret identity. The CIA could not afford to allow him to be seen by any of the scores of Afghans working at the base, except for the trusted driver who was now on his way to pick him up. Even the guards at the front gate would be ordered to turn away to avoid the risk that one of them might glimpse Balawi’s face.

  Matthews picked a secure spot for the meeting, a gray concrete building in a part of the base that served as the CIA’s inner sanctum, separated by high walls and guarded by private security contractors armed with assault rifles. The building was designed for informant meetings and was lined on one side by a large awning to further shield operatives from view as they came and left. Here, surrounded by CIA officers and free from any possibility of detection by al-Qaeda spies, the Jordanian would be searched for weapons and wires and studied for any hint of possible deception. Then he would fill in the details of his wildly improbable narrative, a story so fantastic that few would have believed it had the agent not backed it up with eye-popping proof: Humam al-Balawi had been in the presence of al-Qaeda’s elusive No. 2 leader, the Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the twisted brains behind dozens of terrorist plots, including the attacks of September 11, 2001. And now Balawi was going to lead the CIA right to Zawahiri’s door.

  When the debriefing was over, a medical officer would check Balawi’s vitals, and a technical team would outfit him for the dangerous mission to come. Then everyone could relax, have a bite to eat, perhaps even a drink.

  And there would be a surprise, a birthday cake.

  The Jordanian had just turned thirty-two on Christmas Day, a trivia plum that Matthews had been pleased to discover. In fact his special birth date had very nearly caused him to be named Isa—Jesus, in Arabic—before his parents changed their minds and decided instead on Humam, meaning “brave one.” And now this same Humam was speeding toward Khost with what could well be the agency’s greatest Christmas present in many a season, an intelligence windfall so spectacular that the president of the United States had been briefed in advance.

  As she waited for the Jordanian, Matthews’s head swirled with questions. Who was this man? How did anyone get close to Zawahiri, one of the most reclusive and carefully protected humans on the planet? So much about the Balawi case was confusing. But Matthews had her orders, and she would not fail or flinch.

  Balawi would be given a fitting reception. There were no birthday candles at the CIA’s forward base in violent eastern Afghanistan. But the Jordanian would have his cake.

  That is, if he ever showed up.

  By 3:30 P.M. the entire team was ready and waiting outside the interrogation building. Another thirty minutes dragged by without news from the Jordanian, and then an hour, and now the sun was slumping toward the tops of the mountain peaks west of Khost. The temperature dropped, and the nervous adrenaline congealed into plain nervousness.

  Had something happened? Had Balawi changed his mind? There were no answers and nothing to do but wait.

  The group of men and women beneath the metal awning had grown to fourteen, an oddly large gathering for an informant meeting. Normally, the imperative to shield a spy’s identity dictates that no more than two or three officers are ever allowed to see him. But as was quickly becoming clear, there was nothing normal about the Balawi case. There was a sense of destiny, of history being made, one CIA participant in the events later recalled. “Everyone,” the officer said, “wanted to be involved in this one.”

  Gradually the officers segregated themselves into small groups. The security detail, two CIA employees, and a pair of guards working for the private contractor Xe Services LLC, commonly known as Blackwater, stood near the gate, talking in low voices, M4s slung over their backs. Three of the men were military veterans, and all four had become chummy. Pipe-smoking Dane Paresi, a former Green Beret and one of the oldest in the group at forty-six, had joined Blackwater after a career that included stints in multiple hellholes, most recently Afghanistan, where his conduct under fire had earned him the Bronze Star. Iraq veteran Jeremy Wise, thirty-five, an ex-Navy SEAL with an infectious grin, had signed up with the security contractor to pay the bills after leaving active service and was struggling to figure out what to do with his life. Security team leader Harold E. Brown Jr., thirty-seven, was a former army intelligence officer and devoted family man who taught Roman Catholic catechism classes and led Cub Scouts back in Virginia. Scott Roberson, thirty-eight, had been a narcotics detective in Atlanta in a previous life, and he was looking forward to becoming a father in less than a month.

  Nearer to the building, two men in civilian jeans and khakis chatted with the ease of longtime friends. Both were guests at Khost, having flown to Afghanistan from Jordan to be present at Balawi’s debriefing. The big man with ink black hair was Jordanian intelligence captain Ali bin Zeid, a cousin of King Abdullah II of Jordan and the only one in the group who had ever met Balawi. Darren LaBonte, an athletic ex–Army Ranger who sported a goatee and a baseball hat, was a CIA officer assigned to the agency’s Amman station. The two were close friends who often worked cases together and sometimes vacationed together along with their wives. Both had been anxious about the meeting with Balawi, and they had spent part of the previous day blowing off steam by snapping pictures and puttering around on a three-wheeler they had found.

  A larger group clustered around Matthews. One of them, a striking blonde with cobalt blue eyes, had been summoned from the CIA’s Kabul station for the meeting because of her exceptional skills. Elizabeth Hanson was one of the agency’s most celebrated targeters, an expert at finding terrorist commanders in their hiding places and tracking them until one of the CIA’s hit teams could move into place. She was thirty but looked even younger, bundled up inside a jacket and oversize flannel shirt against the December chill.

  The wind was picking up, and the late-afternoon shadows stretched like vines across the asphalt. A frustrated boredom set in, and officers fidgeted with their cell phones.

  Paresi set down his weapon and tapped out an e-mail to his wife. Mindy Lou Paresi was airborne at that moment, flying back to Seattle from Ohio with the couple’s youngest daughter after holiday visits with family. As he often did, Paresi would leave a message that his wife would see when she landed, just letting her know that he was OK.

  “E-mail me when you get to the house,” he wrote. “I love you both very much.”

  Jeremy Wise stepped away from the others to make his phone call. The Arkansas native was feeling strangely anxious, so much so that he wondered if he was coming down with something. He dialed his home number, and when the answering machine picked up, the disappointment clearly registered in his voice. “I’m not doing very well,” he said, speaking slowly. He hesitated. “Tell Ethan I love him.”

  Bin Zeid was the only one with a direct line to Balawi, and his phone had been distressingly silent. The big man now sat quietly, clutching his mobile between thick fingers. It was bin Zeid who had gone over the arrangements with the agent—Balawi had been his recruit after all—and now the possibility of failure loomed over him like a leaden cloud. On top of it all, both he and his CIA partner, LaBonte, had personal reasons for wanting out of Afghanistan in a hurry. LaBonte’s entire family, including his wife and their baby daughter, was waiting for him in an Italian villa they had rented for the holidays, and the delays had already eaten up most of his vacation. Bin Zeid, who was newly married, had made plans to spend New Year’s Eve with his wife back in Amman.

  When his phone finally chirped, it was a text message from dark-haired Fida, asking her husband if he was positive he would be home the following evening. Bin Zeid tapped out a terse reply. “Not yet,” he wrote.

  Just after 4:40 P.M. bin Zeid’s phone finally rang. The number in the caller ID belonged to Arghawan, the Afghan driver who had been dispatched to the border crossing for the pickup. But the voice was Balawi’s.

  The agent apologized. He had injured his
leg in an accident and had been delayed, he said. Balawi had been anxious about his first meeting with Americans, and he asked again about the procedures at the gate. I don’t want to be manhandled, he kept repeating.

  You’ll treat me like a friend, right? he asked.

  By now a column of dust from Afghawan’s red Outback was already visible from the guard tower. The driver was moving fast to thwart any sniper who might happen to have a scope trained on the road in time to see an unescorted civilian vehicle heading for the American base. In keeping with the CIA’s instructions and, coincidentally, with Balawi’s wishes, there would be no fumbling or checking IDs at the gate. On cue, the Afghan army guards at the front gate rolled back the barriers just enough to let Arghawan roar past. The Afghan driver then veered sharply to the left and followed a ribbon of asphalt along the edge of the airfield to a small second gate, where he was again waved through.

  Now Matthews could see the station wagon entering the compound where she and the others were waiting. Matthews had asked bin Zeid and LaBonte to greet Balawi while she and the other officers kept a respectful distance, spread out in a crude reception line beneath the awning. She began making her way to a spot at the front of the line, straightening her clothes as she walked.

  Security chief Scott Roberson and the two Blackwater guards unslung their rifles and made their way across the gravel lot, but the arriving Outback cut them off. The car rolled to a halt with the driver’s door positioned directly in front of the spot where Matthews was standing. Arghawan was alone in the front seat, his face nearly obscured by the thick film of dust that coated the windows. The figure sitting directly behind him in the backseat was hunched forward slightly, and Matthews strained to make out the face. The engine was cut, and in an instant Roberson was opening the rear door next to Balawi.