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BREAKING: Latest Would-be Suicide Bomber a Double Agent


May 8, 2012 by

The New York Times is reporting that the “would-be suicide bomber dispatched by the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually a double agent who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the suicide mission,” according to American and foreign officials.

The Times:

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the agent left Yemen, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his aviation attack and critical information on the group’s leaders to the C.I.A., Saudi and other foreign intelligence agencies.

After spending weeks at the center of the terrorist network’s most dangerous affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, the group’s external operations director and a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Read more here.

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6 Comments

  1. EEllis
    May 9, 2012 | 3:50 am

    I got to wonder why in the heck are we getting all this info? It seems a strange way to run a counterintelligence program

  2. dduck
    May 9, 2012 | 9:54 am

    Who leaked it and why. Counterintelligence should be kept secret, as briefly mentioned in the NYT article.

  3. DaGoat
    May 9, 2012 | 1:38 pm

    Have to agree with the first two comments – no reason at all to leak this stuff.

  4. slamfu
    May 9, 2012 | 2:30 pm

    Unless you want your enemy to second guess who he’s got working for him. Also, they managed to blow up the leader of the cell already using info from the informant, who obviously didn’t use his belt and is now out of the organization. Its not like he was going back in for round 2 after pulling that off.

  5. DORIAN DE WIND, Military Affairs Columnist
    May 9, 2012 | 3:00 pm

    @slamfu:

    Good point. There are still lots of questions surrounding this — some of them we may never know the answers to — and I wouldn’t go on a witch-hunt, yet.

    It is not certain who leaked this info, but my guess is that the intelligence community knows what they are doing, especially when it comes to sources and methods, and that there may still be some rhyme and reason to all this. Organizations such as this one are and will always be aware of the potential for double, triple agents — part of the business.

  6. dduck
    May 9, 2012 | 3:14 pm

    slam, so why are the CIA and Saudi intelligence pissed?