CIA suicide slaughter: Worst Security Lapse in US History-Taliban working on video

• AGENTS WORKING OUT IN GYM WHEN BLOWN UP--multiple sources

Al Qaeda: CIA MURDERS WERE RETALIATION FOR RECENT OBAMA DRONE ATTACKS. AFP: "AFP) – 5 hours ago KABUL — Al-Qaeda said the suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven agents last week was

• "revenge" for the deaths of top militants in US drone strikes in Pakistan, the US monitoring group SITE said on Thursday." via Drudge Report
  

12/31/09: "The victims were working out Wednesday evening when the bomber stepped into the outpost’s gym and triggered his explosive vest, the Taliban and U.S. military officials said Thursday....

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the base and blew himself up inside the gym. A U.S. official briefed on the blast also said it took place in the gym."...
Star-Telegram, wire reports, "CIA had hoped to use suicide bomber as an informant, former officials say"

• Even Newsweek is heading for the exits. "A Huge Screw Up"

• TALIBAN WORKING ON VIDEO AS PROOF THEY FOOLED OBAMA.
  

• (It was Bush's fault of course even though in 1993 when Al Qaeda first bombed the World Trade Center he was in the baseball business).

Newsweek:"The suicide bomber who penetrated a CIA base in Afghanistan last week and killed seven officers was not just any Al Qaeda double agent: He may have been a well known Al Qaeda blogger who boasted of his

• “love of jihad and martyrdom” in a Taliban web magazine just a few months ago.

The new details emerging Monday about the Al Qaeda background of the attacker have stunned former agency officials and intelligence experts and raised the possibility of a major security lapse that permitted the bomber access to the base.

• It’s a huge screw-up,” said one former senior CIA official who had worked with some of the CIA officers killed in the attack.
  
• “The question is, why did they think they could trust this guy? What was the level of confidence that would allow somebody like this access to a place
  
• where there were this many officers?”

Initial reports last week identified the suicide bomber who blew up the CIA team based in Khost, Afghanistan as a member of the Afghan National Army. That appeared to explain how the attacker was able to get inside the base without being closely searched.

• But NBC News and other outlets on Monday identified the bomber as a Jordanian physician who was working for Jordanian intelligence while secretly serving as an Al Qaeda double agent. After being arrested by the Jordanians over a year ago, the physician, identified as Human Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi,
  
• had reportedly promised Jordanian intelligence and the CIA that he would help U.S. officers find Ayman Al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two. (Among those killed in last week’s attack was a senior Jordanian intelligence officer who is a cousin of Jordan's King Abdullah.

Al Jazeera’s Arabic language website, citing unidentified sources as well as a Taliban spokesman, added what may be the most surprising wrinkle of all to the story: the Jordanian doctor is the same person known as “Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani”—a frequent contributor to jihadi websites who once served as the administrator for the Al Hesbah Forum, a major Al Qaeda website.

• The al Jazeera story quotes the Taliban spokesman as saying that the blogger was able to “mislead U.S. and Jordanian intelligence for a whole year,” adding that
  

• the Taliban plans to release a video soon to confirm its account.

There is no way to independently confirm that Balawi and “Abu Dujinah” is the same person. But Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. government consultant who monitors jihadi web forums, said that many of the details emerging about Balawi – including his age and background — seem to match comments that Abu Dujinah has made on various web postings....

The former CIA official – who requested anonymity because of the ongoing probe into the attack—said that even if some people at the CIA believed that the Jordanian jihadi could lead them to Zawahiri,

• it was puzzling that he would have had access to a base with multiple officers.

• “You never trust a person like that,” the former official said.

“This is something that is unprecedented,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, president of the Institute of Gulf Affairs, a Washington think tank that monitors Persian Gulf developments. “This is the first time a terrorist has managed to infiltrate the CIA and carry out an attack.”" by Isakoff and Hosenball

***********

UK Telegraph: "The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan, the home town of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, accordign to a report on NBC News.

• Balawi was arrested over a year ago by Jordanian intelligence for suspected terror activities, but was thought to have been turned to support US and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He detonated a suicide bomb that killed the seven CIA employees - four officers and three contracted security guards - and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, who was a member of the country's royal family.

• Some of the officers had flown in to Camp Chapman near Khost from Kabul for what was billed as an important meeting that could yield information on the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden.

The base coordinates CIA operations and intelligence gathering in Khost, a hotbed of insurgent activity that borders Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, former CIA officials said.

• NBC said the head of the CIA operation in Khost was among the dead. It was one of the darkest days in the agency's 62-year history. In April 1983, eight CIA personnel were killed when the US embassy in Beirut was hit by a Hizbollah suicide bomb."******

Above all via Gateway Pundit